Sarah Palin's Memoir Ready for Christmas Book Market [TIME casts Authorship Aspersions!]

TIME Magazine ^ | October 07th 2009

[Steelfish]

Sarah Palin's Memoir Ready for Christmas Book Market

By LAURA FITZPATRICK

Fans and foes alike are hoping for surprises in Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, which leapfrogged Dan Brown and Glenn Beck to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller last week before even being published.

But with a few weeks to go until the book hits shelves on Nov. 17, the biggest shocker so far is the sheer speed with which she wrote it. The former Alaska governor penned the 400-page tome in just four months, finishing well before the planned spring release date. So how the heck did she do it?

Palin's publisher says the answer is simple: hard work. "When she resigned as governor, she had a lot more time and was able to really devote herself full-time to writing the book," says Tina Andreadis, a spokesperson for HarperCollins. "That's really all that there is." (See pictures of Sarah Palin.)

Well, there's also this: Palin had help. Editorial sidekicks are par for the course in political memoirs, though ghostwriters say many pols are heavily involved in the writing process. Palin's assist came from Lynn Vincent, a writer for the Christian news magazine WORLD, who has also co-authored several other books.

[LS]

Danielle Steele is close to this pace, but every one sells half a million.

[mono]

It was a dark and stormy night. Dark, not black.

[GnuHere]

Uh...right. Are you actually reading the thread?

[ASOC]

Thanks, that my point, volume vs high priced hardback.

[Soul Seeker]

Reportedly much of it is drawn from her journals. This would speed up completion as others have noted as it’s not from scratch.

I expect this though. I still remember when some of Reagan’s material was released and the media was in shock he’d actually written them himself.

[presently no screen name]

the biggest shocker so far is the sheer speed with which she wrote it.

Seems like TIME has some lazy @$$es working for them that they are SO SHOCKED at someone proficient and timely in their work!

[Balding_Eagle]

I thought it was a pretty even handed article.

[numberonepal]

The answer for the speedy writing is that the bulk of the material was already there.

That and VR Software I would guess. It speeds things up considerably. I would rather edit a heady conversation after the fact than try to write as fast as I think. I do believe Limbaugh said this is why he doesn't write much. His hands can't keep up with his mind and he loses the train of thought.

[FastCoyote]

[Gee, I write MOST of my books in 4-5 months]

I have one I’ve been working on for 15 years, another I finished writing in five, but I’m doing one now that will happen in 5 months or less because I had all the research. Heck, I cranked out 125 pages the first three weeks.

Anyone who reads Sarah’s Facebook pages knows the girl can write.

[LS]

Good point on the research. I get the most writing done when I know in advance what my research says, where it’s going etc. I’m slowest when I have to research as I go-—find this fact, find that theme.