CLINTON'S MEMOIRS (first sentence a problem)

William Jefferson Clinton will fetch a handsome $10 million plus to write his memoirs, but that's only if he completes the manuscript.

Already, we have inside information that he's struggling with the first sentence:

2nd DRAFT: Once upon a time, in a town called Hope, I was looking for a place to dispose of Vince Foster's body when ... (crumple, crumple)

3rd DRAFT: Be honest. You know why you purchased this book. You want juicy details about the defining episode of my presidency. Well, you've come to the right place, because starting here, in Chapter One, I will reveal everything I know about my attempts to broker a lasting peace in Northern Ireland ... (crumple, crumple)

4th DRAFT: As I sit here in my Harlem office, smoking a fine cigar ... (crumple, crumple)

8th DRAFT: Are you an attractive female between the ages of 18 and 35 years old and looking to meet a well-connected gentleman friend? (crumple, crumple)

11th DRAFT: Hey, Starr. How much did Knopf pay for your memoirs? In Your Face! (crumple, crumple)

12th DRAFT: Inhale? Shoot. I practically swallowed the whole bong. (crumple, crumple)

13th DRAFT: This is the story of great love affair between a dashing young president and his ruthlessly ambitious, withholding shrew of a wife. (crumple, crumple)

15th DRAFT: It was a night to remember. Barbra Streisand was bouncing on the trampoline in the Lincoln Bedroom. Ted Kennedy was sprawled in the corner, drinking a 32-ounce Singapore Sling. I knew then we needed to bomb Iraq. (crumple, crumple)

18th DRAFT: It's tough to write a memoir when you're not sure what the meaning of "was" was. (crumple, crumple)

19th DRAFT: Remember when I saved Haiti? Nobody ever talks about that. (crumple, crumple)

20th DRAFT: During the darkest days of my presidency, when my moral failings were exposed to the world, I sought spiritual counsel from the Rev. Jesse Jacks ... (crumple, crumple)

21st DRAFT: Pardon me for squandering my legacy. I pardoned everyone else. (crumple, crumple)

"I...I...and then I...but I..."

"Now let's talk about me for a minute..."

Check out this description (and my heckling) of Bubba's thrill at writing his autobiography:

[Q: Let me ask you about your book. Maybe you can do anything, but with respect it's hard to imagine you sitting in a room for hours at a stretch, pulling out your hair and writing. Can you actually write this book?]
Yes. [The "yes" was very quick a sharp. Then a pause and a shift to a more jovial and reflective tone.] But let me tell you how I'm doing it.
You know, I was scared to death I wouldn't be able to do it. So we had this old barn at the house, a hundred-year-old barn. And I converted it into an office. There was a little apartment in the back, so I made it a little bigger and converted it into an office. And in this office I have all my Native American pottery and stuff I've been collecting for thirty years. And my photo albums from the White House, the kind of non-right-wing-kook books about the Administration[Ah, those must be the boot licking toadies and lapdog books.], a whole collection of other people's memoirs, my tapes of the White House years, increasingly tapes I've done with Ted Widmer for oral history. [Widmer was a White House speechwriter and now teaches at Washington College in Maryland.] And then I have out in the garage all these boxes of stuff. I've got my grade school band programs. I've got every letter I wrote to my mother in college and every letter she wrote to me. I organize this stuff, I bring the boxes in, I sit down and make an outline. I read what I've got in the oral history. And I sit and I write in a notebook.
I have a notebook, and I write it all. I got the most done in August when I didn't have anything else to do.[I guess that the foundation he spends 'half' his time with must have been on vacation] But when I get free days, book days, I go out there and I sit at a glass table, and I sit there and I write. I do get some work done on the road. I make outlines of how I want to write the next section. I started out with an outline I made well over a year ago that I've pretty much stuck to. But it has been difficult. It's been frustrating. I haven't gotten the time. When I get a little bit behind... I'm more or less on schedule for where I'm supposed to be to be finished next June. So it can come out around Thanksgiving. I want to have it come out at the holiday season.
Some of this has been painful for me, but it's all been wildly instructive. And it convinced me that nearly every person over fifty should try to find a time to sit down and engage in the same exercise, even if you never intend to publish anything. You need to think about what really meant something to you. Who did you really love. Who really made you what you are. What the seminal events did. And also it's an incredible discipline. Because I found it shocking to me what I remember and what I don't. [Don’t' worry, Bubba, some of us will never be able to forget what you did to this nation.] It's shocking to me what I can remember factually and how hard it is for me to be absolutely sure about how I felt at the time. You know[An accomplished author and a Rhode scholar should really try to avoid phrases like "you know"], how did I feel when I was 16?[Bubba this really shouldn't be so hard, you are a perpetual adolescent. Grow up.] I don't really know. Because I have some letters and other things it's a little easier to kind of return to those days. I've got an amazing amount of stuff in my pre-public life, and I'm working through it.
But so far I've had the time of my life. [Of course this is the time of your life. You're spending it obsessing over the person you love the most in your life, yourself]You know, this is scary. And you know it's frightening to write a book. Even if you've been totally honest, and think the book is you, what if people don't like it? [Yeah, tell me about it.] You can't make 'em buy a book. You know, what was that line from The Producers - Sometimes they won't come and you can't make 'em; [Clinton laughs heartily]

An Interview With Bill Clinton (long)

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