Helen Thorpe -- a freelance journalist who has published in national magazines such as The New Yorker, a contributor to the This American Life radio show and wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper --- described how she spent five years tracking four undocumented Mexican girls from high school into college for her recent book,"Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America."
The young women she wrote about faced rejection and problems with the legal system , such as being barred from getting a driver's license or a checking account, at at time when they were coming of age, getting boyfriends and moving into a critical stage of life.
"It is the worst moment in life to tell young people you don't belong," she said.
Ben Wildavsky, former education editor of U.S. News & World Report, credited the Kauffman Foundation that he now works for for enabling him to write his recently published book, "The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World." He set out to write a different book profiling universities around the world, but realized after attending a conference in China that the more compelling story was an emerging global race to the top for universities. He took advice of other innovators, he said, and decided to risk changing course.
Beth Fertig, an education reporter for WNYC public radio in New York City , took a year off to write about the struggles special education students face learning to read. Her recently published book is called "Why cant u teach me 2 read? Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test."
She said she was fortunate to find a publisher willing to let her devote part of her book to the policies that were hurting children.
"I ended up putting policy in the book," she said. "That's probably why it didn't sell so well, but teachers loved it."
The authors said they all wrote proposals to agents that involved some meaty reporting with an outline of key themes they wanted to address.
"My proposal was a sample chapter," Fertig said.
The meat is important, probably more so than ever, because agents and editors are turning down a greater percentage of proposals, Thorpe said.
All three reported they made it a point to write every day. Fertig worked in the New York City Library. Wildavsky had a daily quota of words, which he kept to himself. "Just write. Just sit down and write," he advised. "I stuck to that religiously for months."
Thorpe set a limit of 500 words a day, but later expanded that to 1,000 words. "That is a chapter a week," she said.
The authors said they all ended up doing their own publicity, which included solicting book jacket quotes, setting up their own web pages and urging newspapers and magazines to review their work.
All the effort and sacrifice was worth the production of a published book, the authors said. Fertig said her work is getting the attention of principals and making a difference in New York City.
"It is totally worth it," she said. "I feel like I got a master's degree. I visited more schools than in 10 years of daily reporting."
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