Interview with the Authors of The Lost Girls: on writing, agents, and getting published

The Lost Girls, due out May 11, 2010

Ever wondered what it would be like to ditch your jobs, boyfriends and families and set out around the world with your two best friends? What about turning those experiences into a published book? Well, here are some answers to those questions in an interview I conducted with the authors of the soon to be released travel memoir The Lost Girls, Jennifer, Holly and Amanda.

This is of personal interest to me as I ‘m writing my own book about my 750 mile walking journey to the 88 Buddhist temples of Shikoku, Japan. Jennifer, Holly and Amanda offer great insight and advice on the writing process, finding an agent and pitching your travel book.

Their book  details the journey of three friends who make a pact to quit their high pressure New York media jobs; leave their friends, boyfriends and everything familiar behind; and embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world. This interview is the beginning of new installment on Todd’s Wanderings where I’ll interview travel writers and bloggers, people making a difference in the world and anyone who is just plain awesome.

Todd: The Lost Girls started out as a blog about your round the world trip. Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to turn it into a book or did that come later?

During the trip we’d occasionally fantasized about someday writing a book about our adventures, but that was really just a pie-in-the-sky notion we didn’t pursue while traveling. As writers by trade, Holly and Amanda did pen a few pieces for magazines while we were on the road–while I (Jen) parlayed my TV background into becoming an impromptu photo journalist. But aside from writing the occasional articles and maintaining our travel blog, we didn’t want to squander our time on the road holed up in internet cafes working—we wanted to have authentic experiences and adventures exploring the countries we’d traveled so far to visit.

Although in the end, our blog was what inspired our travel memoir.  What started out as a creative means for staying in touch with loved ones soon became a matter of public interest. Apparently, our family and friends weren’t the only ones reading our website. Thanks to the viral nature of the web, news of The Lost Girls travelogue (www.lostgirlsworld.com) started to spread—first in the US, then overseas –as soon, tens of thousands of readers began logging on to live vicariously through our journey. Once we provided a dedicated email address for correspondence, readers wrote to us directly, sharing how our stories had inspired them and even changed the direction of their lives

As luck would have it, a few agents and one editor at a major publishing house stumbled across our blog while we were still traveling, and wrote to express interest in maybe turning our tales into a book. Of course, no one actually wanted to meet with us until we’d composed a polished book proposal, so the three of us holed up for an entire month at Holly’s family’s house in Syracuse to put our 60-page document together. Once we’d completed the proposal (including three sample chapters), we found an agent whom we really trusted at Writer’s House, and he managed to sell our book to HarperCollins. The memoir of our round-the-world journey comes out in May 2010, and is called The Lost Girls: Three friends. Four continents. One unconventional detour around the world.

Todd: Many travelers dream of writing about their experiences, but finding an agent and a publisher can be very competitive. How did you approach this and any advice for aspiring travel writers?

First and foremost, know that it is possible to find an agent and to get a book deal. Keep in mind though that it can take even talented writers several years before they connect with the right representative, and find a publisher, willing to take them on. Some of the most famous writers got doors slammed in their faces (or worse, heard nothing at all!) several times before they finally convinced someone to believe in their ideas, and their talent.

Before attempting a full-length book, we’d recommend honing your specific voice and narrative style as much as possible by, well—writing. Keep a journal and jot down notes and ideas everywhere you go. Sign up for your own a travel blog. Contribute pieces to other well-know travel sites like Vagablogging, World Hum, or Brave New Traveler (some will actually pay you to publish your work!) Pick up a copy of the Writer’s Market to find out which travel magazines and newspapers accept queries. Learn how to write an article query by snagging a few more books from Amazon.com on the topic (there are several guides out there to help you get started) or take a class through MediaBistro (locations in cities nationwide). The point is to gain both experience—and collect the clips—that will later show an agent and publisher that you have the chops to write an entire manuscript.

One interesting thing we learned when trying to shop around The Lost Girls: agents and editors have recently been flooded with book ideas from one writer who has visited a single destination. These ideas are often discarded, because they’re not viewed as compelling, or unique enough. Our editor at Harper Collins told us that the reason they liked The Lost Girls was that it presented a unique spin on a travel tale: Three best friends from New York City, who abandoned all of the things that 20-somethings are supposed to want (stable jobs, great guys, a positive bank balance) in order to travel around the world.

Todd: Writing a memoir can be an intense task just for one person. How did you manage writing one with all three of you? Any serious disagreements about what really happened?

Figuring out how to cover all the countries we’d visited, the myriad experiences we had on the road and divide up the chapters equally among three different women was no easy task.  Especially since we were faced with the challenge of meshing our individual and collective experiences into a single memoir, which took quite a lot of planning.   Everything seemed to take much longer because we had to coordinate with each other whenever we wanted to change an angle or write about a place we hadn’t originally decided upon in our outline.

On the upside, it forced us to be more organized since we had to map out exactly how we saw the book being organized right from the start. And having two other co-authors to be accountable kept us motivated to stick to our deadlines – and to be as honest as possible when sharing our stories.

We always joked that taking a trip around the world together was the best preparation for writing a book together –and likely the only factor that got us through the tough times where writers block struck or we had to rearrange our chapters. But believe it or not, never had any major disagreements about what really happened (again, co-writers have an annoying way of keeping you honest!).  And in the end, writing a memoir together has made our friendships even stronger we really feel so incredibly lucky to have shared not one, but two, life changing experiences together.

Todd: What travel book would you compare The Lost Girls to in terms of style and voice?

I’m not sure we can identify another travel memoir that has a very similar tone and style to The Lost Girls. At least we’ve never seen one that’s both narrative non-fiction and been written by three authors.  We do sometimes describe the rotation between authors (and the name of who’s speaking noted at the top of each chapter) to that of a Jodi Piccoult novel, but of course our “characters” are real and hers are fiction.

There have been several travel memoirs that have greatly inspired us, especially Honeymoon with Brother by Franz Wisner, who isn’t afraid to take chances and get off the beaten path when he travels, and writes about his experiences with compassion, humility, and humor. He was also a first-time book author who took a risk by quitting his job, just like us, and traveled around the world. So we really identified with that.

Todd: Some travel writers fictionalize their stories to make them more compelling. How do you feel about that and did you do this in The Lost Girls?

While it’s sometimes necessary to condense tales or rearrange certain details for the sake of storytelling, I think any good travel writer will try to stick to the truth as closely as possible.  When we set out to write The Lost Girls, there was no doubt in our minds that we wanted it to be a memoir versus a similar tale of fiction characters who resembled us.  We wanted to share the real story of our journey –the good, the bad and the road weary) in a very authentic, very relatable way –which we feel we’ve accomplished to the best of our ability.

Of course, the end result is really best answered by sharing the disclaimer from our book:

“When we finished our first draft of The Lost Girls, we realized that in order to print it in a typeface you didn’t need a magnifying glass to read—and make it light enough to carry on a plane without incurring excess baggage fees—we’d probably have to cut things down a little. And so we set out to streamline our tale, a task that required numerous late-night brainstorming sessions over red wine and sushi and a few workdays when we never changed out of our pajamas at all.

And though we’ve stuck to the real story of our adventures as closely and accurately as we can recall (cowriters have a wonderful way of keeping you honest!), we occasionally merged characters, reordered events, and condensed time to keep your eyes from glazing over. Many names of people and places (including the Indian ashram) have been changed and some of the identifying details altered to protect the innocent—and not so innocent—but the characters and stories themselves are entirely authentic. We really did bribe our way across the Cambodian border, really did sleep with cockroaches in Kenya, and really did get on a plane together and embark on a journey around the world. The trip turned out to be the greatest adventure of our lives—and that’s the most important truth of them all.”

Todd: What were the highest and lowest points of your trip?

Definitely our first major high came when we reached the top of Dead Woman’s Pass on our second day on the Inca Trail (notoriously the hardest).  Amanda and Holly and both fallen ill a few days before and we weren’t sure we’d even make it on the trek let alone make it to the top of one of the steepest impasses of the four-day, 3-night hike to Machu Picchu. So it was even more rewarding when we reached the Lost City of the Incas just in time to see the first rays of sunlight hit the ancient ruins.

The other major highlight of our trip was volunteering for a month in rural Kenya through Village Volunteers (www.villagevolunteers.org).  Since all three of us were interested in youth education, the company’s founder recommended that we work with the Common Ground Program, a grassroots NGO that housed The Pathfinder Academy primary school, which served hundreds of children, many of who were orphans or had lost at least one parent to illness or disease.

As for the lowest points, aside from a few bouts of road weariness, we fortunately made it through the trip with no major catastrophes.  That’s not to say we didn’t have a few bumps in the road.  The scariest was when we were pretty much held captive by a maniacal cab driver in Vietnam who’d rigged his meter to cheat us. When we protested he sped off into a dark alley and wouldn’t stop until we screamed so loud we likely woke up the entire Old Quarter of Hanoi.

Todd: What would you like your readers to take away from The Lost Girls?

We live in unique times where women in developed nations like our own have an abundance of choice (a luxury to be sure) but given the freedom to blaze our own path for one of the first times in history, which way do we turn? Every woman must decide for herself whether to take the road of marriage, or motherhood, or career. Or all three. Or something else entirely. Our grandmothers and mothers worked hard to get us to this place, but there is no roadmap that helps us learn how to trust our guts so we can make the right decisions for us as individuals that will ultimately leave us feeling happy, free, and fulfilled. We hope that after reading The Lost Girls, young women will understand that they’re not alone in their uncertainty, and that it’s okay for them to figure out exactly who they are on their own timeline. For us, the exploration process involved travel, with two friends at our sides.

If you liked this interview please leave a comment, or if you’ve read the book please tell us what you thought.