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About this episode

For this episode, Kate is joined by Eric Jay Dolin, the New York Times-bestselling author of 17 books, to talk about his writing process and what it’s like to build a career as an author of popular histories. His books include Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America; A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes; Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates; and Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution.

His most recent book is The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail. His books have won awards and are frequently named best books of the year. Before writing history books, Eric worked in environmental policy and earned a PhD in environmental policy and planning from MIT.

We talked about how his career has developed, the ups and downs of the book market, and he dished about advances, career trajectories, and why he thinks he’d rather have a huge book now than early in his career.

Mentioned in this episode:

Eric Jay Dolin, The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail

Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860

Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

James Truslow Adams, The Founding of New England

Welcome back to the Drafting the Past podcast.

I'm your host Kate Carpenter, and in each episode, I interview

a historian about how they research and write their books.

I don't know about you, but I've always been curious about the

careers of authors of popular histories, and I've wanted to

know how they write so many books that are eagerly snatched

up by readers. So I was delighted when Eric Jay Dolin

agreed to join me on the podcast.

Eric Jay Dolin: Thanks for having me on.

Eric is the New York Times best-selling author

of 17 books. 17! His most recent book came out this summer,

called *The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair,

and Deliverance in the Age of Sail.* His books have won awards

and are frequently named best books of the year. As you'll

hear, before writing history books, he worked in

environmental policy and earned a Ph.D. in environmental policy

and planning from MIT. I was eager to hear from Eric about

how he thinks about his writing and his career as a popular

historian, and he certainly had a lot to say about it, so let's

get right to it. Here's my conversation with Eric Jay

Dolin.

Eric Jay Dolin: When I was a kid, I wanted to be Jacques

Cousteau when I grew up. I was really into marine biology. I

lived on the edge of Long Island Sound, and I was a super serious

shell collector, seashell collector. I mean, so serious

that when I was a senior in high school, I wrote a 150-page paper

on the mollusks of Long Island Sound. Two chapters, two

chapters of which got published in a malacological journal. So I

was really into seashells. I was really into marine biology and

didn't think at all about being a writer. I wanted to be a

malacologist or a marine biologist. I went off to

college, and I came up against hard science and lab science,

and I realized that I liked reading about science more than

I liked doing it. So I shifted to environmental policy. I

decided I wanted to be a professor of environmental

policy, so I wanted to get a, I have an undergrad in biology and

environmental policy. I have a master's in environmental

management, and I have a PhD in environmental policy and public

policy. But, and don't worry, I'm getting to the writing part.

I was always writing on, I was always writing on the side. I

was writing op-eds. I actually wrote a couple of short books on

environmental topics and stuff like that. But then when I was

at MIT, where I got my PhD, I decided I didn't want to be a

professor anymore, and I'd spent all this time getting this

degree. I almost dropped out, but I decided that okay, let me

finish it. I didn't apply for a single teaching job, and the

reason I didn't apply for teaching jobs is I love

teaching, and I actually TAed quite a few courses, and I I

taught a couple of courses completely at MIT and another

university. I like teaching. I like talking to students. I like

dealing with that. I didn't like the kind of writing I knew I

would have to do to get tenure at a university, and I wasn't

too fond of the academic politics. So anyway, I got out

of MIT. I didn't apply for a single teaching job, but I had

to figure out what to do. I was married, and I did environmental

policy for about 11 years. I worked-- If you saw my resume, I

couldn't keep a job. I mean, I worked for, I worked for the

EPA. I worked for the National Transportation Safety Board. I

worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I worked for the Marine National Marine Fisheries Service. I

worked for the National Wildlife Federation earlier. I worked on

Capitol Hill for a senator. I was all over the place, but all

while I was doing all of that, I kept writing op-eds, articles, a

couple of books. Actually, one of my books earlier books called

"Political Waters" is about the cleanup of Boston Harbor, and

that's based on my dissertation. And then in the late 1990s, I

told my wife Jen. I said, "Listen, I'd like to be a writer

full time." And she said, "Okay, why don't you try writing for

the government first?" And I I got a job writing accident

reports. I didn't really like it. Then we moved up to

Massachusetts. I worked on fisheries stuff. I was always

writing on the side. And she told me at one point, she said,

"If you can, if you can save a year's worth of your salary, you

can quit your job to try this writing thing. So it took me

about seven or eight years, and then one night while we're

watching House on TV, the TV show, my wife says, "You can

quit your job. She had been keeping an account for me, and I

I quit my job four weeks later, and I've been a writer since

2007. I'm not trained as an historian. I've taken very few

history classes. Each book I write is sort of like getting a

PhD-not a PhD, a master's degree-in the topic. And I spend

most of my time reading about that topic, and I bounce around

a lot of topics. But I naturally fell in with maritime policy for

the maritime history, for the most part, because of my

background and my love of the ocean, I live in Marblehead.

I'm talking to you from the third floor of our house, which

was built in 1753, which is right very close to the water. I

spent a lot of time on the beach. I'm not a sailor, but

anyway, that's how I got into writing. Just a side of all the

careers I've had, of all the things I've done, of all the

jobs I've had, the thing I enjoyed most about all of my

jobs was the writing. So I figured, well, maybe I should

try doing this full time. And I don't recommend it. Writing's a

miserable job if your number one goal is to make money. If you

want to be satisfied and happy, and you're you know, and you're

lucky, then it's a it's a great job. And I've had a good career,

and I've had great support from my wife, and I have to give her

a lot of credit because I couldn't have been a full time

writer without her support. And she works because I didn't want

to be a starving writer. I wanted to live the life I wanted

to live. So it's all worked out. That's that's the long, that's

the short, long story of how I got into writing. And I will add

that anybody listening who wants to be a writer, the I think the

number one. There are a couple of traits that you need to have

to be a good writer, at least of books. I think the most

important trait. I know people are going to argue with this,

but I think the most important trait is well, it's combination

having drive, being a little neurotic perhaps, because it's

hard to write a book. You have to have real drive, but you also

have to be able to accept failure. I can't tell you how

many would-be writers I've spoken to over the years who

dread getting rejected. I got rejected so many times. Just get

used to it. Let it roll off your back, and you know, keep going.

And eventually, if you are a decent writer and you have a

decent topic, you'll find a publisher, but or an agent. But

that's just the beginning of it. There are hundreds of 1000s of

books published every year. The number of those authors that

actually make what you would consider an okay living is

vanishingly small. So if you're going into writing and you want

to make a good living, you want to make six figures a year

consistently. You're picking the wrong career unless you're

incredibly lucky because it's maybe 1% of the writers are are

doing that on an annual basis or even fewer. So you have to know

why you're getting into writing if you love it and that's really

what you want to do. You're going to figure out a way to do

it, but it's getting harder and harder to make a living because

publishers are focusing more and more on people who have big

platforms and a lot of followers and and celebrities and even

though books are doing pretty well, what I see happening and I

don't have the statistics to back this up, but I'm pretty

sure it's true, is that a smaller and smaller percentage

of huge best-selling books are well. They always have made the

bulk of the money for the big publishers, and I just think

it's being exacerbated. I think if you looked at a big

publisher, and my publisher is Norton, it's an independent

publisher. It's pretty big. I bet if you looked at them that

let's say they published 100 books a year, I bet five books a

year are making 90% of their profits, or 10 books maybe. So

that still leaves room for other people to write books. But the

Authors Guild, of which I'm a member, did a survey back in

2019, and if I remember correctly, you know, the average

full-time writer was making 25 or 30 $1,000 a year. You can't

raise a family, live a life on on that. So I'm not trying to be

a downer. I'm just trying to be realistic. I can't tell you how

many people ask me out to coffee and they want to be writers, and

you can see the dollar signs behind their eyeballs. And I'm

going to write a big book, and I'm going to be Stephen King or

whatever, or David McCullough.

You just need to have, like any career, you need to have a sense

of perspective and reality. But I do believe. I still do believe

that you're driven, and you are pretty talented, and you got

some good ideas, and you've got a good support system that you

can make it as a as a writer. It's just it's just tough job.

It's toughest job I've ever had, but it's the best job I've ever

had. But right now, it's not a good time to be asking these

questions because I'm trying to come up with another idea for a

book, and I keep going through ideas and keep shooting them

down. I think I got an idea, but I don't know. By the end of the

year, I want to be. I'm sort of like a dog without a bone. I

need to be working on something. But then again, I'm 64 years

old, and my wife, as I said, put aside a year's worth of my

salary. The reason for that is because I read in writers'

market, and sort of common sense is if I failed as a writer, I

wanted to have a cushion so I could look for another job. So

that amount of money that I put aside for a year's worth of my

salary is still there in its own little account. I haven't

touched it, but I told my wife, I'm 64. If I fall flat in my

face, I am not getting another job. Sorry, I'm going to be out

in the backyard mowing the lawn, taking care of the fish, doing

this. So the pressure is sort of off. So I'm looking around for

an idea, but that's after many years of work and and writing.

And I used I used to have black hair. Now I have gray hair.

It's all because of

Eric Jay Dolin: writing.

What what draws you to a topic? I mean, how do

you decide if something is going to be a good book,

Eric Jay Dolin: well, the first, the most important thing is sort

of aha, that's a great topic in my my own mind. If I think it's

if I think it's really exciting and interesting, then that's a

good start. But then that's only the beginning. I also have to

think that my or should convince my agent to some extent if you

know he thinks it's a good idea. And then we have to go to a

publisher. I mean, for my last nine books, I've been with the

same publisher. That makes it a little easier. My proposals are

not nearly as long now as they used to be when I was starting

as a writer. But still, I've had I've had ideas that I thought

were great shot down, and I haven't written them because I

didn't want to go to another publisher. And even if I did,

who knows if I'd find somebody because they need to. People

need to be convinced that it's going to sell decently, not that

it's going to be a huge bestseller, but that it's maybe

going to have a good shot of selling 10,000 hardcover copies.

That's sort of the baseline for a major publisher. But most

books sell fewer than 10,000 copies. Even a lot of books

published by major publishers, they they don't always get it

right. It's sort of like gambling. You go into a casino

and you hope for a win, and you don't always get one. So so it's

sort of convincing a couple of people. But most important is

me. Is this an exciting topic? Do I think a lot of readers are

going to be interested in this? Does this relate to my core

demographic or the people that have been reading my books in

the past, so there are a whole bunch of considerations that go

into it. But I will counterbalance that with there

are a number of topics that I've passed on for a variety of

reasons, mostly because I thought the topic was written to

death, and then somebody comes along and writes a book on it,

and it's a bestseller. So I don't, you don't want to trust

my judgment. I'm actually. I'm being sort of serious. I've

gotten to the point where I don't want to do this book or

whatever. But you know what? It could be a huge bestseller, and

I'm just discounting it for my own reasons. But that's all you

can. That's all you can rely on is your own judgment and a sense

of what the market is. But I'm just amazed at how many people?

How many more books can we have on George Washington, Abraham

Lincoln, the Civil War, the American Revolution? I mean,

there are hundreds of 1000s of books written on these topics,

and I'm sure people keep finding stories. And I'm not trying to

diss those things because I've written about the American

Revolution and the Civil War in in some of my books. But still,

how much more new stuff can we find out about these famous

celebrities that people love to, or politicians, people love to

read book after book on them. And I'm probably the one that's

wrong. I'm probably could pick. There are a number of famous

people that I said, "Oh, I'd love to write a biography of

that person. But there have been five biographies written in the

last 30 years. Well, another writer might look at that and

say, well, I'll give it my own spin. And there are tons of

people out there who obviously love to read about George

Washington, Abraham Lincoln, you know, battles in the Civil War,

World War II battles, and there's still more that haven't

been plumbed or survival stories in the Arctic. I mean, like my

last book, Reckon Mentor: Survival story in the Pacific

Ocean, but the wreck of the Mentor, my last book, and the

one before that, Left for Dead. Nobody's written a book about

those except for one in the last 100 years. So those really were

new topics. But other books I've written on the fur trade, on

whaling, on pirates, there are dozens, scores, hundreds of

books on those topics, and I still chose to go ahead with

them. So you never know.

Well, I want to ask you some practical questions

about your writing process. So I am, as I'm talking to you, you

are sitting in what looks like a beautiful office with lots of

great art behind you. Is this where you like to do your

reading and writing?

Eric Jay Dolin: Yeah, well, not all my reading. I do a lot of my

reading when it's nice weather outside in our backyard or on

the beach. But if I need to take notes, I'm in front of my

computer, which I am now. And yes, this is my office. It's the

third floor of the house, and those are paintings. I, for many

years, still to a minor degree, I was a big collector as a kid.

My mom was an antique dealer. I collected so many things:

shells, rocks, stamps, coins, old TV guides, history books,

and for a while I was collecting. Every year I'd buy a

couple of miniature paintings, and that's what you see behind

me. I probably have 60 of them now. Miniature paintings,

miniature sculptures, because we run out of space. We have a lot

of artists in our family. My mom was an antique dealer. Our house

is chock full of stuff. My kids call it the museum, and it's

just my it's my personality. So yeah, I'm up here. I love this

place because, as I said, that our house. I don't know if I

mentioned our house was built in 1753. It's pretty old. It's in

very good shape. But the floorboards, if you could see

them, I mean, we have 24 inch wide pine floorboards. Not all

of them are 24 inches, but it's an old nails and five

fireplaces. It's a wonderful place to write about history.

But the thing that I love the most about this room is not this

room. It's what's to my right that you can't see. This room

has its own bathroom, and in that bathroom is an old clawfoot

tub, and I love to take hot baths. My wife hates baths, so

this is my little hideaway. And in the winter, when it's cold, I

take a lot of baths. I just sit there and I read, or I watch a,

I watch a documentary, or I just think I love it. And I know

people are going to listen to you waste a lot of water. It's

really not that much water. We save water in a lot of other

ways. In fact, the local water department has often asked, "How

many people do you have living in the house? Two. They say you

use hardly any water, so we're still we're conserving in other

areas, but not in the bathtub.

When do you like to do your writing?

Eric Jay Dolin: Oh, it's it's very variable. There's sometimes

when I write for weeks on end, seven days a week. Especially my

wife does a lot of travel, so when she goes away, I tend to do

a lot of writing. But there are also when I'm researching, I'm

not really writing, and that can take many months for a book. You

know, 789, months where I'm just reading and taking notes. But

when I start writing, there are some days that go great. There

are other days where I do not a lick of writing. You know, it

all depends on what writers are fond of saying. You need to

write every day. That's baloney. If you need to write every day

to keep your writing skills up, you have a problem. If you need

to write every day because it's just coming out of you so at

such a rapid rate, you need to write, and that's more like

fiction writers. Then fine, I'm I'm okay with that. But there

are times where weeks go by, whether I'm traveling or

something else is going on, or I have to do gardening out back.

I'm a huge gardener, or I I just I'm just stumped for a little

while. I don't know, but I would say the average, I wake up and

I'm usually in front of the computer by eight in the

morning, and I'll work till lunch, and then I'll have lunch,

and then I'll work till four or five or six. Well, four or five

usually, because my wife, one of the deals we made now that I'm a

writer and she has a very hard job and works a lot of hours, is

I make all the dinners. Now we often go out to eat too because

I'm not the greatest cook, and I have like six dinners that I'm

good at. But so I usually kick off and I cut the vegetables and

I make food at around five, and she gets home at usually 630.

But I have a lot of time to write during the day because she

leaves work for work very early, and she travels a fair amount.

So, but there's no direct. I'm not one of those people. Oh, you

got to be writing by 8o'clock or 9o'clock. You got to write till

five. If something's really flowing and it's really

exciting, there are times, especially when my wife's away,

where I can work 1213, hours and pump out 4000 good words. You

know that's a lot. Then there are times when I write a

paragraph, and my wife used to make fun of me. I'd come

downstairs. I say, "I wrote a good sentence today. I wrote. I

wrote a good paragraph today. So, and then you go back and

editing. Editing's fun. I like editing too because you sort of

have the basic thing, and you're like a like chiseling marble,

making it hopefully making it better. But then there comes a

point where I just get tired of what I'm working on, and I just

want to hand it in. So I'm very good. I'm very good with

deadlines. I have contracts, and they have deadlines, and I meet

my deadlines, or I I hand in my books before they're due because

one I get bored after if I'm working on something for too

long, and two I want to get paid and I you know I don't but most

you'll find that an awful lot of authors I don't know if it's

most but a lot of authors blow right by their deadlines. It's

very common in this business,

what systems do you have for organizing your

research and notes?

Eric Jay Dolin: Basically, what I do is on Microsoft Word on my

computer, I just have different files for each chapter. I know

roughly, I know the outline of my book, the chapters, and I

have different. So I'll say chapter one, and I just dump, I

cut and paste information I find on the internet. I scan books

and documents, and I cut and paste them PDF documents or

images. I just put them in these files in order, and then when I

the file gets too big, I do chapter one, part two, chapter

one, part three, chapter one, part four, and sometimes I end

up with seven or eight different files, each with 100 megabytes

of information in a word document, which is a lot. A lot

of them are pictures, though. So I have all the information in

the chapters, and then I read through all that information. I

add to it, and I start to collate, and I pull from that

when I'm writing the chapters. Okay, I remember I'm writing

about X. Oh, I remember reading about X. It's in chapter one,

file four. I go find it, and I do a search. See, when I put

pictures in the files, you can't search a picture, so I always

put a little one-sentence description of what's in that

picture, so I can do a search through a 150-page document to

find oh quote you know xenon's quote or whatever I don't know

whatever. So that's that's mainly what I do. I I read a

lot. I take photocopies I scan. I take pictures. I write down

notes. I have links if it's online, and I try to organize it

based on the outline of the book. And then I just start

plowing through and writing the book. And invariably, I have to

find more new information. I get new documents. I add them. In

fact, one of the things I'm going to do when I get off the

phone is my computer, despite the fact I have this computer

with a lot of memory. I am butting up against the memory,

the the disk, the RAM, or whatever-not the RAM, the just

the memory on the computer. So I'm going to go through some of

my older books, and I have files. For example, I download

PDFs of books from the internet, from Google. Books or other play

those take up a lot of space. So for some of my older books that

I wrote 1015, years ago, I might have gigabytes worth of

information. I don't know that are just 300 books that I

downloaded in newspaper articles. Well, at this point, I

don't need them again. I'm not going to write about that again,

and I can always gather the information again. So I have to

go through and clean up my computer because it's starting

to go slower, and it's a very old computer. I mean, it's 2019,

I think, which is getting old. My laptop's old, so I need to

think about in the next year because I'm starting. I can't

get updates anymore because my computer's not advanced enough,

so things are slowing down. But that's appropriate because I'm

slowing down too. So you know, maybe maybe I will slow down at

the same rate as my computer, and then we'll both turn the off

switch, and that'll be it.

Where where in your research process do you

start writing? I

Eric Jay Dolin: basically start writing when mentally I feel I

have enough information to write to tell the story I want to

tell. There's no hard and fast time. It's not a sudden eureka

moment. It's just okay. I've taken enough notes on this. I've

read enough books, enough articles. It's time to write.

And sometimes I make a mistake, and I have to go back and do a

lot more research. But most of the time, I just start writing,

and I still do research while I'm writing because new things

come up. I mean, part of the process of writing is when you

start to put it down on the page. You understand. You find

new connections. You find new information. You you say, "Oh, I

didn't think about it that way, and or or or you write a quote

from this person and you say, "That's interesting. They

mentioned this in the quote. What really is that? And did

they say anything else about that? Or did somebody else, a

contemporary, say something about that? So you sort of build

up the story as you go. So it's not as if research and writing

are totally compartmentalized. I do a heavy bout of research for

probably six months, where I'm not writing at all, just

gathering information. In a sense, that's the easiest time

because with all my education and background, especially my

PhD, I'm very good at gathering information. It's not-I don't

have to memorize all of it. I just have to know that I have it

and that I can look at it later. So it's kind of fun. I go to

libraries. I do random searches online. It's like you know,

bouncing around. It's sort of a fun time, but then once I have

all the information that I think I need, I start writing the

book. But then, while writing it, I realize I need more

information, and I go back to libraries, I go back places, and

I, you know, I'm still finding new information at the end of

the writing process because you know, new new connections pop up

in my head.

I'm curious. You you kind of mentioned chapter

outlines earlier. How do you think about narrative structure,

and and maybe you can use like the structure of the wreck of

the mentor as an example?

Eric Jay Dolin: Well, it's kind of easy when you're writing

nonfiction. Not easy. I I tend to be chronological, but what

you'll see in most of my books, they have a loopback mechanism.

The introduction will be an exciting, dramatic story from

somewhere in the book, usually not the beginning of the book,

and then I okay. I've just told you this exciting story. Now I

have to loop back to give you the history. And occasionally

within the book, I have loopbacks, but they're very

clearly demarcated. But for the most part, my books are

chronological. I'm telling a story, so you usually tell a

story in chronological order. So that that does a that does a

great amount of the work in organizing the material. It's

not just a free form. You know, I'm telling a story. It's hard

to tell a story if I suddenly introduce a character that I

haven't talked about before, and then they disappear for six

chapters, and then they they come back. So you need to the

the narrative arc of the story is sort of built into the tale

you're telling, but that's still you still require there's still

work that you have to do. The biggest thing that a writer has

to do, I think, of history, unless you have a topic that has

almost no background, which Wreck of the Mentor had less

background than a lot of my other books, but still had a

lot, you know, contemporary documents, but for the most

part, almost any topic you find in history, you're going to have

more information out there than you could possibly include. So

one of the biggest skills that a writer needs is knowing what to

cut, knowing what not to use, knowing when enough is enough,

and not letting better be the enemy of good enough. Any one of

my books I could have worked 10 years on. I get bored, so 18

months, 20 months. I write a book, and then I think about it,

and then I have another contract, and I write another

book. So I'm not a professor, you know. I'm not focusing on

one little area for my entire career, and I'm digging deeper

and deeper. But I'm not again. I'm not dissing books that take

longer, I know there are some great narrative nonfiction

books, history that are very easy to read, are are wonderful,

and I know the authors spent 567, years writing them. It just

that's not how I'm built, unless it was the most amazing topic

that required that amount of effort. I literally could not

see. Working on a book for seven years. The only exception to

that, or even five years, the only exception is if I was

famous enough or the idea was good enough, where there was a

big auction and I got a million dollar advance, then I could

support myself for five years. But that rarely happens, even

for well known authors. You have seven. I once sat next to an

author. I won't mention his name. He's dead now, but I still

don't want to mention his name. Huge best-selling author, won a

Pulitzer Prize, won a National Book Award, historian, and the

book that he-I was sitting next to him. He was hawking his book,

and I was hawking one of my earlier books. This is a long

time ago, before I was a full-time writer, and I was so

in awe of him because I-I knew his name, and he was famous. He

was a famous author. He worked on this book for seven years,

and I was asking him questions. First, I said, "Oh, it must be

great being so famous and winning all these awards. You

can write whatever you want. He laughed at me. He goes, "You got

to be kidding. He wanted to write a book about Greenland,

and his off his publisher said, "No, no. And finally, he pushed

them so much. They said, "Okay, you write a book about

Greenland. We'll give you a $30,000 advance. So he never

wrote the book on Greenland, and he also said to me, he wrote in

my book to Eric, a fellow writer with deepest sympathies, because

because I was asking him questions. I was so naive. I was

probably 35 years old, 40 years old, a long time ago, and I was

so naive.

I said, "Boy, it must be wonderful living your life, and

you're famous, and you make a lot of money. And that's when he

pointed out. He goes, "No, my last book took seven years.

Yeah, I got about a million dollars advance. This is a long

time ago, but seven doesn't last that well over seven years. And

I have an apartment in New York City, and I like the nice life.

And he goes, "It's really tough, and I have to pay my own health

insurance. So he didn't paint a very good picture of being a

writer. So you know, when I pick a topic, it's something I got to

be excited about. Hopefully, I can write in less fewer than two

years, and then move on to something else. And you know,

it's it's it's not it's not a it's not science. It's an art.

It's sort of figuring out what you're interested in? I know I

know tons of stories of writers who had a topic that they

thought was a slam dunk, and their publishers thought it was

going to be a huge hit. In fact, they printed 75,000 advance

copies, and it's a total flop. And they took a huge bath. And I

know other books that the publisher and the writer had no

big hopes, didn't think it was going to do that well, but

thought it was going to do okay. All of a sudden, some celebrity

mentions it or gets a front page New York Times review, which

isn't as important as anymore. It used to be huge. You got a

front page New York Times review. Your book was going

through the roof. I know of a specific book, and again, I'm

not going to mention it. Within the last eight months, it got a

glowing front page New York Times review, and I happen to

know the publisher. They sold 40 copies of that book in the next

week. 40. So I guess the point I'm making is that you, it's

it's really a gambit. It's like walking into a casino. You never

know, but it doesn't mean you know nothing. I mean, publishers

are smart, agents are smart, writers are hopefully smart, and

you can pick books that you know on average do okay. But those

big blockbuster books, half the time people are surprised. It's

kind of wacky. It's such a wacky career. To it's a great career.

It's best thing I've ever done. But it's just it's not like

you're an accountant. You get a job in an accounting firm.

You're a lawyer. You get become a lawyer. You work the federal

government. There's a career track that you're going on. It's

sort of like being a podcaster. Very few podcasters I get

interviewed by do it full time because making a living as a

podcaster is probably harder than making a living as a

writer. But it's the same concept. Any creative endeavor

that doesn't have a clear career track line. It's just creative

work. It's hard to to make a living. I'm not trying to harp

on the money part of it, but you know people need to live. This

is not a we don't have guaranteed income yet. AI hasn't

caused us to have guaranteed income, which I don't think is

going to happen. So people have to live, and I got two kids that

had to go to college, and you know like to do things, and so

you have to think about that. But again, I I will add that

writing is no better or worse than any other job. People have

a very exalted view of writers. They do because I meet people

all the time. They get, oh, you're a writer. That must be so

great. You know, people do surveys of what you could. What

would you want to do if you could do anything? Writer is

often at the top of the list, just like professor. People

think professors are you get your summers off. You get this.

Any job, being a plumber, being an arborist, being a journalist,

being a newspaper, they're all hard. Being a writer is hard,

and it's no better or worse. It has no more value or less value

than any other job. I really believe that, and that's part of

the reason why I don't go to a lot of book festivals.

I have to say that I've been invited to a number of them. I

like other writers. I have some writer friends, but a lot of

writers are just so full of themselves. I can't stand it.

There you go. That's my little secret. I just I I. Just I'm

more of a regular guy that got into writing. I don't view

writing as this. Oh, it's so important. You know, you're so

special when you're a writer. I think fewer nonfiction people

feel that than the few fiction people I've met. Who knows?

Maybe I'm all washed up. You know, maybe maybe I'm totally

wrong, and it's just me and it's how I perceive people. But

again, I can't tell you how many people. And you must have come

across this. I meet so many people that find out I'm a

writer, and they either instantly tell me that they have

a book they want to write, or that must be amazing, or it's

it's so special. Just the other day, somebody you know said,

"Oh, writer, that's such a that's such an amazing career!

You're so lucky. Yeah, I am lucky to be a writer. But again,

I'm no better or worse than the plumber that comes does unclogs

my toilet. In fact, he's more useful. I have a PhD, and my

wife says you have a PhD, but you don't help anybody, which is

true. Maybe I help people through books. I like to think

that my books, you know, give some enjoyment to people and

help them learn a little bit about history. So I don't think

I'm totally useless, but

well, I want to talk about your books a little

bit because you know one of the things I find so engaging about

your books is that you know they're really they're built, of

course, from archival sources like all history and nonfiction.

But in your books, those sources sort of fade in the background.

They're there, of course, in the notes, but you know you're not

constantly quoting from them or referencing to them. You're sort

of just telling the story. How do you think about translating

sources to your own voice into scenes?

Eric Jay Dolin: Yeah, well, if you look at my earlier books,

they had a lot more quotes, and one of the complaints of one of

my early editors was say it in your words, not their words,

unless their words are so amazing you have to include

them. So it's sort of been beaten into me, and I think

that's right. I think that people want to read more of your

words. It's smoother, but good quotes are excellent. I love

quotes. I still use a lot of them. My attitude again is that

the reader is trusting me to synthesize or extrapolate or

extract or rewrite or paraphrase the quotes and tell the story

accurately? I'm not writing an academic book with 1000

footnotes and blocking up. One of the things is a lot of books

like mine they don't have the footnotes in the the numbers

aren't in the page. You just have it by page number, and

that's to make it less imposing. I mean, some of my books have

won academic awards because I think they're deeply researched.

But it's not a PhD dissertation, and I don't want to be-I don't

want it to be dry as dirt. And I want people to read it. And I

think a lot of people get intimidated if there are too

many footnotes, too many endnotes, too many numbers in

there, and use too many big words unnecessarily. I just

think a simple tale told in a straightforward way that also

has a lot of information in it. Because I think one of the

things a lot of people say about my books is they learned a lot,

and that's because I want to learn a lot while I'm writing

them. And there's a lot of information back in there. Some

people love it, some people hate it. You can look at any one of

my books and all the comments on Amazon or other other places.

And some people rave about it. Give it five stars. This is

amazing. It's so easy to read. I learned so much. It was

effortless. I couldn't put it down. And then the same book,

you can have somebody say, "This is this is horrible. It's very

slow. He keeps repeating himself. Like somebody made a

comment the other day on one of my older one of my books, and I

really thought about. I try not to look at comments too much

because you know, hey, everybody's got an opinion now.

But this guy, he was online and he was videotaping. He gave my

book, my pirate book, three stars, and his complaint was too

much information, and he repeated himself a lot. I wrote

the book and I thought about it, and I almost responded to him,

but I decided not to. I didn't repeat myself anywhere in the

book. They're totally different stories. Each each chapter is a

different pirate or whatever. I really didn't repeat myself. I

know what's in the book, but people see what they want to

see, and they have their own chips on their shoulder. So

another piece of advice to writers who are listening to

don't spend too much time reading your reviews, whether

they're professional reviews or the run-of-the-mill reviews by

average readers, unless you know read the good ones makes you

feel good. And I've been fortunate; I've written a lot of

books. I really have never gotten a pan review. I've gotten

some reviews that aren't stellar, they're good. But I've

been really fortunate with professional reviewers. I've

gotten a lot of good reviews. My books have been picked on a lot

of best of books, and I think people generally who read my

books like my books. The problem is billions of people haven't

read my books.

Well, that is a problem,

Eric Jay Dolin: and there are so many books written. It just-it's

a flood. I don't know how people keep up. I don't know. I always

ask bookstore owners, "How do you pick books? There are so

many books, wonderful books. Every week, there are hundreds

of books coming out from major publishers and big presses, and

they're all good, I'm sure. How do. You pick as a reader too. It

is it is wild. It puts it in perspective. You know, I guess

if somebody I've never sold millions of copies of a book. I

imagine if you sell millions of copies, boy, you think you're

really finding a good audience. That must must be a different

feeling. But even me, an average you know writer, a upper mid

list writer that occasionally has a bestseller. Lots of people

read my books, books the libraries. Lots of people check

them out. I know for the wreck of the Mentor, somebody just

wrote to me in this one big library, New York Public

Library, a while ago. They had like they have 40 copies or

something of my of the book, and and there's a wait list. It's

very nice to hear that, but you really have to put yourself in

perspective. There's so many good books, and I absolutely do

not believe that the books that are the best sellers that it's

natural selection, and they are the ones that deserve it

necessarily. There are probably 100 other books that don't get

much attention or more that are just as good by any metric you

want to pick, but for whatever reason they didn't have the

right review. They didn't. It's not quite the right topic. They

didn't have the right promotion. I don't. I don't know. But there

are 1000s of books that come out every year in history that are

wonderful, but only a small number of them do well, and any

writer that tells you that they they don't want their book to

sell well is BSing you or has a huge trust fund and doesn't

care. And there are writers like that. Let me tell you. So

anyway, you need to know what you're getting into. But if you

want to be a writer and you're meant to be a writer, quote

unquote, not that I believe there's fate involved. You'll be

a writer. You'll figure out a way to do it. I know writers

that you know a lot of writers have a regular job and they

write on the side and they write wonderful books and wonderful

articles, but they never quite succeed enough in their writing

to quit their job, and that's fine. In fact, I bet most

history books are written by people who aren't full-time

writers. There aren't a huge number of full-time writers who

actually make a decent living. I'm not talking about a great

living, just a decent, consistent living. An awful lot

of writers of history are professors. They have nice jobs.

They have grad students that can help them do research, and they

can write in the summer or after work. You know, a lot of people

have asked me, "Why don't you teach? I've been asked to teach

at universities writing courses. I just not my interest, and I

don't need to financially. So I I never have taken. In fact, I

told one person they wanted me to go to this writers retreat

and give a course on writing nonfiction. I said, what do I

have to tell them? Obviously, I'm talking a lot. I have a lot

to tell you, but it's more anecdotal stories. I'm not sure

I'd be a good teacher on how to write nonfiction. Like for

example, one thing I don't believe in. I don't think

writer's block is a real thing. I think if you have writer's

block, you don't want to write. If that's stuck and you think

what you write is so important and needs to be so perfect that

you're blocked, then you shouldn't be a writer, because

you know, first of all, perfection is an elusive goal.

Second of all, you can always edit. You know, write craft,

write 100 pages of drivel. Go back; it becomes a little

better, comes a little better, and a little better. So,

well, I wanna I wanna ask you another craft

question because I feel like one one kind of tricky thing about

writing narrative nonfiction is knowing when to really like stay

in a scene and describe it and go into detail and when you sort

of summarize and move the story forward, how do you find that

balance? Do you just feel it out, or do you have methods?

Eric Jay Dolin: I don't have any methods. I mean, real literally,

it's I'll be writing a scene and it goes on or part of the story,

and I say, you know, this is too long. There's too much

information here. I'm getting bored. The writer's not getting

the writer's. Reader's going to get lost. So it's just a gut

feeling. But they're they're definitely. I have no method

other than writing and knowing. It's like everybody uses this

quote, and it's sort of silly because it's so old. The Supreme

Court said they couldn't define pornography, but they know it

when they see it. But it's it's the same with writing a chapter

of a book. I sort of know when it ends, and and then I write a

cliffhanger, hopefully something that makes people want to go to

the next chapter. You sort of know when you've spent enough

time. You know, you're if you're writing about people in a boat

out on the ocean for 14 days, you write about those 14 days,

but you don't want to turn each day into free pages of anguish.

You want to get through the story with some high points, and

at some level, there's a balance between having the story go fast

and being exciting, and bogging down the story. And the worst

thing you, the thing you want to avoid, is have a story that's

been going fast all of a sudden, slow down a lot because you

might lose your readers, and that's why that's why writers

spend so much time writing their introductions at the beginning

of the book, because if you don't catch them in the

beginning of the book, they're not going to keep writing. Some

people reading, some people do. My wife will often give a book a

lot. She reads a lot, a lot of fiction, and she'll often give a

book a lot of rope before giving up on it. But you know, I don't

when I when I pick up a nonfiction book, and I don't

read a lot of modern nonfiction books because since I don't have

a history background, each book is like getting a master's

degree, and most of my reading relates to what I'm writing. So

I don't have as much time to write current to read current

bestsellers or current books. So I'm not very good at answering

the question, "What book are you reading now? Because it's likely

to have been written in 1890. But it's really important. I

think I've done a good job with my books. Obviously, not a good

enough job to get more and more readers. But I think all my

books start out. Their introductions are very dramatic,

very exciting. In part because it gets me excited about the

story. I mean, I I pick up a lot of books that all the reviewers

say are great, and they may sell a lot. And I start reading them,

and I go, "This is dry. This is this is. I have to work to read

this. How come so many people think it's so great, but you

know, I'm luckily I'm not a reviewer.

Are there people that you, whose writing you

admire, that you look to as inspiration? They don't have to

be recent.

Eric Jay Dolin: Yeah, Samuel Eliot Morison. I happen to have

won the Samuel Eliot Morrison Book Award. That's not why, but

Samuel Eliot Morison, even though some of his writing is

considered controversial today, especially about Christopher

Columbus, given the reevaluation of Christopher Columbus, but

Samuel Morrison, he was a wonderful writer. Especially, he

wrote this book that was really I really enjoyed, and I used in

a couple of my books. is It's Maritime History of New England,

I think it's called, or something of New England. It's a

short book. He had a wonderful way with phrases. He was a deep

academic, he wrote like a fiend. I don't know how he wrote so

many books. He's like Winston Churchill. I mean, he wrote

dozens and dozens of huge books. But he's a wonderful writer. He

writes books that have a lot of information, a lot of historical

accuracy, but in a breezy way that makes you want to keep

reading. So I like him. I like Eric Larson. I've only read two

or three of his books. Mainly, the reason I like him is because

of one of his earlier books, Isaac Storm about the Galveston

Hurricane. I wrote a book on hurricanes, and I used that as a

source. And I really got to appreciate he's a very good

writer, and he really knows how to tell a story and keep the

reader interested. James Truslow Adams, he he won a Pulitzer

Prize like in 1938. He wrote a book called The Founding of New

England, which is was very important to me when I read it.

It was really fun to read. Who are some other readers, writers?

I don't know. I don't read. I I don't read so many. I listen to

a lot of books, and that's different than reading it. I

don't know. A lot of the books behind me that you see, you

really can't see them. They're behind my head. Almost all those

books in that bookshelf are books I blurb. So by definition,

I liked a lot of those books because I I haven't blurbed a

lot of books I've been asked to. Because if I don't like a book,

I'm not going to blurb. And there are some writers who write

blurbs for books and basically don't read the book. I've been

told that by other writers. I'm not making that up. I would

never blurb a book that I haven't written, read, and I

would never blurb a book that I didn't like. And I've actually

had a couple of authors who've asked, and not that I don't get

a huge number of requests. Huge best-selling authors get must

get dozens of requests a week. So I don't really have any

others. Not horrible, David McCullough. Okay, David

McCullough. I've read a number of his books. I like them,

Theodore Roosevelt. I read a couple of his old books; they

were fun. He's really, he's really, he's got a way with

writing. What a writer! I mean, he wrote so much, and he was

president of the United States. And just these people are at a

different level. These people write all that stuff, especially

Winston Churchill. Man, was he! I love his story. I love him as

a character, celebrity, a politician, and he's very

important in world history. And I wish we had more Winston

Churchills, but we don't. But he he was a good writer at one

point. He was the highest paid freelance journalist in the

world. Part of that's because he was famous, but some of that was

before before he became prime minister. He's just an

interesting guy. I don't know. That's enough names. I I'm

really bad on that because I know there are other nonfiction

writers who make a point of reading a lot of other current

books. I just don't.

Besides editors, are there people you turn to for

feedback on your work?

Eric Jay Dolin: Yeah, my wife. She's my first reader. She used

to call herself the comma-kaze because I was very bad with

commas. I'd put commas all over the place, and she'd have to

take them out. I'd gotten better, so my wife reads it. My

kids, my daughter, she's a literary agent. If she want, she

has time to read it. I ask her to read it, but she's very busy.

My editors, a couple of friends I have, some that are

historians, some that aren't. I asked to read it. My

mother-in-law, before she unfortunately she died a week

ago, but she was great. She was a great reader. She was a big

booster of my work. So that's it. You know, not a huge store,

not a huge number of people. My editors, there are multiple

editors. I give it to my main editor, then it goes to a copy

editor, then it goes to a line editor, and they're fact

checkers. I've had one book. It had to go to. A lawyer, because

there were some concerns about libel, so I had to rewrite

something. You know, so I've experienced that too.

You've given us a lot of great advice, both

about writing and about the writing life. What's the most

influential writing advice you've ever gotten?

Eric Jay Dolin: It was probably it wasn't it wasn't actually for

writing, but it relates to writing, and I've already

mentioned it. When I was getting my PhD, I was thinking of

quitting, and my wife at the time said, "Okay, you can quit,

but you can never mention it again. And I wasn't man enough

to uphold that. I knew I would complain the rest of my life.

Also, I paid for my master's and PhD, and my parents didn't help

me, so I had a lot of skin in the game. In fact, when my wife

married me afterwards, she would introduce me to her friends.

This is my husband, debt, because I had $42,000 in loan

debt, and this is a long time ago. So that was a lot of money.

It's probably 80,000, like 80,000 or 100,000 today. So, my

PhD advisor, who I will always love because he helped me get

through the program and gave me good advice. He used to say to

me all the time, "Eric, better cannot be the enemy of good

enough. And I've said that before. That advice is very good

because you're never going to achieve perfection. You always

can work on any issue, any writing project longer, but

you've got to have a sense of when it's a good enough book, I

could go back every book I've written. I could go back and fix

it up and re-edit it and make it look a little different because

I've become a better writer or I have new information or I made a

mistake. But it's over. The book's out there. It's over. And

you know, if it's a major mistake, you can correct it if

it gets reprinted. But so don't let better be the enemy of good

enough. And my professor didn't come up with that idea. I think

it goes back to Voltaire or whoever whoever said it. So

that's that's good advice. Also, this is not advice I've been

given, but it sort of right you know rips through all of my

comments so far. I'm a big believer in humility. My friend,

people know me. It's very funny. I very rarely talk about my

writing. People ask me questions; I'll answer them.

Like today, I'm very voluble, but I, you know, I sort of keep

it to myself. I'm sort of an introvert naturally, but I

really think it's important to be humble in whatever career

you're in. Let other people sing your praises. That's fine, but

don't believe your own propaganda either. You know, I

know I'm a good writer. I know I write good books, but I also

know that I'm one of 1000s of good writers, and that doesn't

make me less special or more special. It just means I'm part

of a career, you know, and I'm doing this. And so, in the end,

as a writer, if you don't enjoy what you're doing, if you're

doing it for other people or to get adulation, you're in the

wrong business. Because first of all, it's hard to get adulation

all the time. There are dozens of writers, hundreds of writers,

who had a huge best-selling book and never wrote another book

that sold nearly as well. But that's a very common story of

writers who have a huge bestseller and become famous,

and they never write another big book. I know of a writer who won

a-I won't say which award because it would narrow it

down-won a huge award, sold a huge amount of copies, and his

next three books, each one did worse than the last. And he went

from being with the major, one of the biggest publishers, to

smaller publisher and smaller publisher. And I know it rips

them apart. You know, because when you're on the top of the

mountain, nobody likes to be on the bottom again. So in some

ways, if you if you have a career trajectory, it'd be much

nicer to do well, well, well, well, well, and then have a

great success towards the end. So that's what I'm waiting for.

I've done all my books have done well. Some have done very well,

but I've never had a blockbuster bestseller. I've hit the New

York Times bestseller list, other bestseller lists, but I've

never had a blockbuster. I'm not a. I'm not a. Good Morning

America is not calling to interview me.

I used to have daydreams of John Stewart or Colbert wanting to

interview me about my books, but I'm not at that level, and I

know that. But boy, would it be nice! Now I'm 64. I have a few

more books in me. I'd love it, and I'd know how to handle it a

lot better if I suddenly had a book that became everybody was

talking about. I think it'd be a fun ride. I'm not expecting it

at all, but wouldn't that be fun? I much rather have that

trajectory, or I'm happy with my trajectory, which is unusual. Is

unusual in writing. Ask ask editors. I've talked to editors

and other people in publishing. It's kind of unusual to have 9,

10 books in a row, all of which have done well, have made the

publisher happy, some of which have done very well, and none

have tanked. That's that's a pretty good writing career, I think.

Absolutely. Well, that feels like a pretty

good note to end it on, Eric Doln, thanks so much for joining

me on Drafting the Past. Thanks for being willing to talk about

your writing process.

Eric Jay Dolin: Sure, thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Thanks again to Eric Jay Dolan for joining me on

the Drafting the Past podcast, and thanks to you for listening

to our conversation. Find links to Eric's newest book, The Wreck

of the Mentor, along with the other books mentioned in this

episode. In the show notes, if you'd like to support the show

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don't let friends write boring history.