On Writing WHEN NEWS BREAKS by Carol Lin

Memoir is inherently about relevance, being current, a hot property in the ever-demanding attention economy. Yet, I waited seventeen years to write WHEN NEWS BREAKS. Before you judge me as naïve, please know the pressure to publish immediately after leaving CNN in 2008 made sense to me. I was fresh off the anchor desk and involved in a tech startup to help cancer patients and their families. I knew I was still a catchy headline: “CNN Anchor, Widowed New Mom,” partnered with the former Stanford Research Institute, seeking to make meaning out of my journalist husband’s death. The title, WHEN NEWS BREAKS, was a metaphor for a love story about two journalists navigating a complicated relationship tested by the breaking news they covered. The private news of my husband’s cancer diagnosis when I was six months pregnant was, according to my agent, an irresistible emotional hook. This is why I know that my most painful life experience was, in literary agency parlance, very marketable.

I understood that publishing was a business. Publishers, the ultimate gatekeepers for debut authors, look for stories that will sell tens of thousands of copies within weeks, not years, immediately after a book launches. So, in 2008, I wrote the first three chapters of WHEN NEWS BREAKS, plus the chapter outline and marketing plan, and crafted a query letter under the guidance of my young literary agent, who would eventually become one of the most successful agents to represent female authors. Time was of the essence, as my value diminished with every month that passed off the CNN anchor desk. We submitted my book proposal and immediately got interest from big-house publishers. Then, the economy crashed. My agent said there would be no publishing advance money, but that shouldn’t stop me from writing the book. But something else did. I had met someone.

Three years after the despair of losing my husband, the dark night of learning to care for my newborn, I actually found love again. Or perhaps love found me because I was not looking. But once in it, I knew turning to my past on the page would not allow me to be fully present with this man, who would marry me and help raise my daughter. Nurturing this relationship became my priority. I set aside the earliest version of my book, and by making that decision, I set aside the pressure to be someone more than the woman I needed to become: a wife, a devoted mom, a friend who committed to birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries, or the breaking news of another close family friend facing a life-threatening diagnosis.

It sounds commonplace to be someone who shows up for her people. But for most of my adult life, someone else’s story was more important than my own. When I was a national correspondent for ABC News, I booked flights as often as New Yorkers hopped into taxis.

It was when my daughter, college-age, brokenhearted after her first love ended, judged by followers on the internet for her looks and life choices, looked to me for advice that I knew the story, the book, she needed to read. Perhaps my story about a complicated love with a man and a career that demanded everything would offer my most valuable advice: Don’t let perfection be the enemy of a life well lived.

I recalled the loneliness, years ago, of writing the first three chapters. When I decided to finish the book, I found an online writing program that promised a polished first draft worthy of submission to agents and small presses. During the years when I had set aside the earliest version of WHEN NEWS BREAKS, technology advanced to make my virtual writing program and community possible. Through this program, I learned how to avoid the “writer’s cul-de-sac,” also known as the temptation to waste time grooming your first chapter like a cat. The magic would happen in revisions. Their best advice to finish my first draft was to give myself permission to “write a bad book,” which took the pressure off me, a trained perfectionist.

Finding a community of writers led me to my publisher, Third Rail Press. My fellow writers weighed in as beta readers and eventually became essential to finishing WHEN NEWS BREAKS and experiencing a book launch with joy and anticipation. With the passage of time, I published for the right reasons. I didn’t publish to cling to my past identity as a CNN anchor. I published with my daughter in mind, and to learn something new, and lastly, to understand the choices I made.

In the nearly ten months since my “pub date,” I’ve heard from past colleagues as well as strangers confessing how much they see themselves in my story about unbridled love and changing ambition. Notable readers include a well-known Asian American filmmaker and a New York Times book reviewer who genuinely love the story, but I believe my book has fulfilled its purpose. It brought me closer to my daughter and to my friends, which is what I believe writing our most important stories should do.

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CNN anchor Carol Lin is at the height of her career after becoming the first network journalist to break the news of the 9/11 attacks.  A month later, she finds herself in the crosshairs of a Taliban sniper along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, a stark reminder of the sacrifices she made to succeed in a white-centric, male-dominated journalism career. For Lin, breaking news and the defining split second when lives change is a drug—and a love that her traditional Chinese mother warned would never love her back. But when devastating news breaks apart her own life, Lin is forced to question a career that demands everything, a marriage marked by infidelity and cancer, and the sacrifices required to become the mother her daughter needs her to be. Told with fierce wit and candor, When News Breaks is the story of a woman who has been places and seen things but still has to discover who she really is behind the headlines.

WHEN NEWS BREAKS

CNN anchor Carol Lin is at the height of her career after becoming the first network journalist to break the news of the 9/11 attacks.

A month later, she finds herself in the crosshairs of a Taliban sniper along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, a stark reminder of the sacrifices she made to succeed in a white-centric, male-dominated journalism career. For Lin, breaking news and the defining split second when lives change is a drug—and a love that her traditional Chinese mother warned would never love her back. But when devastating news breaks apart her own life, Lin is forced to question a career that demands everything, a marriage marked by infidelity and cancer, and the sacrifices required to become the mother her daughter needs her to be.

Told with fierce wit and candor, When News Breaks is the story of a woman who has been places and seen things but still has to discover who she really is behind the headlines.

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