# Please introduce yourself and your book(s)!
Hello! I’m Carol Lin, a former CNN and ABC News anchor/correspondent and now author of When News Breaks, A Memoir of Love and War. After a twenty year career in broadcast journalism, I am perhaps best known as the first national TV journalist to break the news of the 9/11 attacks on CNN. My passion for the news is rooted in my early childhood growing up in Los Angeles, the daughter of mainland Chinese immigrants. My father, a PhD in English literature, whose own ambitions were shattered when China fell to the Communists, stoked my love of reading and curiosity about the world. Journalism was a natural fit but a demanding career that my mother warned would never love me back. Nevertheless, breaking news felt like love, with the excitement and fulfillment of covering stories as diverse as the Columbine shootings, the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, wars in the Middle East, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. However, When News Breaks is not about the career of a war correspondent. It is a very personal story about what happens when news breaks in my personal life with the birth of my daughter and the death of my husband, also a journalist, and how I learned to choose a life away from chaos in order to find true purpose and meaning.
# What is/are the real-life story(ies) behind your book(s)?
The longer I am blessed to live this life, the more I realize that fact can be stranger, and more intriguing, than fiction. Readers have found many “say, what?” moments in When News Breaks. Chapter one begins in the crosshairs of a Taliban fighter. There is the chapter detailing how I went undercover to learn about the secret world of Chinese boat people coming to the United States, a story hauntingly similar to the village stories my parents lived in their homeland. Of course, historically, the behind the scenes at CNN on 9/11 when the first plane hit the World Trade Center during my morning show are important historical notes. However, readers remember the deeply personal moments such as when ABC News was both the network aiming to hire me, while it’s investigative unit was targeting and chasing my new husband up a driveway because of a sex scandal at the America’s Cup, or when we finally reconcile and become pregnant, and he is diagnosed with a rare cancer. Suddenly, the push and pull of family expectations and a career dim as the real possibility he may die becomes apparent.
# What inspires/inspired your creativity?
Among the six basic tenets of journalism, the Who, What, When, Where, and How, I have always been vested in the Why. If a journalist answers that question in their story, I am all in. So, why did I choose a career I was ill-suited for even as I was award-winning and successful. If, as I wrote, what my mother believed was true, that how others saw us, determined our destiny, why would I choose a career where my identity and sense of self were always in doubt? Exploring the adrenaline addiction, my constant ability to leave the people I loved, was important to understand how I could be a better daughter, friend and eventually, wife and mother.
# How do you deal with creative block?
I often worried with each impossible deadline during my television career, that the words wouldn’t come when it was time to write the story. What if? What if? But they did. So, now say to myself, if I’ve done it before, I can do it again. I have faith that my brain knows how to find the answer. And I have faith that I am part of a vibrant writing community now, where I can noodle the dead-end with someone who has far more experience than I. I have learned to be humble, and ask for help.
# What are the biggest mistakes you can make in a book?
The biggest mistake is assuming the reader actually cares to read my work. I worked like this as an on-camera reporter. I have to earn your interest, especially with memoir. Why me? Why this? Why now? Throughout the writing process, I challenged myself to be reader-centric. Write so that the reader sees themselves in the memoir too. I’m glad that seems to be their experience.
# Do you have tips on choosing titles and covers?
Regarding your book cover, don’t over-design. More is not more, in my opinion. Many covers try to be too many things. Make sure you love your cover because you will be seeing it, posting it on socials, including it in all manner of promotion, so you better love it. My title is subtle but literal. My breaking news is what happens eventually to all of us. Titles have a heavy lift. I wanted my title to be that play on words that journalism but also a personal story was at stake. And that’s where the iconography comes in. In my case, it is the broken jade bracelet which plays an important role in the book. Visually, I wanted the reader to be curious. Clearly something happened, but what? And I didn’t want the cover to imply “journalist.” When News Breaks is a complicated love story about a career and a man. My cover had to work hard to overcome a natural bias that this was about the news business.
# How do bad reviews and negative feedback affect you and how do you deal with them?
I try to deal with them in the same way I deal with positive reviews and treat the feedback as information. Was I successful in conveying the arc of change, the tenderness in complicated relationships, and offering tension but also release? I want to write another book. I learn from my readers who made the effort to be thoughtful about both praise and disappointment. Fortunately, a vast majority seem to like the book very much.
# How has your creation process improved over time?
I spent two years from book conception to publication. That’s a very short writing career so far. I’ll let you know after the next book!
# What were the best, worst and most surprising things you encountered during the entire process of completing your book(s)?
The best moments are still happening, hearing from readers who see themselves in the pages and share their own stories about their mothers, lovers, careers, and personal reckonings. The worst moments, to be honest, involved watching my small press publisher deal with the digital quirks of uploading manuscripts to Amazon and Ingram Spark with our publication date looming. Uploading is than you think! Something in that process kept changing words or moving sentences. It was weird! The most surprising thing I’ve encountered is that I could edit and revise the same book infinite times and never quite be finished. I still see portions in the book that I would tweak or move around!
# Do you tend towards personal satisfaction or aim to serve your readers? Do you balance the two and how?
If it is true that some 300,000 books publish every month, then I have to be the one to define “success.” I am glad I set out to write When News Breaks with specific personal goals in mind. First goal: Finish. When I finished the manuscript, even before I queried agents and publishers, I achieved my main goal. The rest, whether my book was acquired or whether I self-published, would simply be the chance to learn something new. Indeed, pretty quickly, I had an agent interested and an offer with Third Rail Press. I really connected with Alle Mudrick’s vision of a press that highlighted untold stories of women. I knew she’d be a remarkable editor. It’s been the best experience to work with her talent and passion to make the book the best it can be.
# What role do emotions play in creativity?
I’d say emotions plus intuition play a huge role. The marketplace of publishing can be a bully if you let it. That alone can mess with creativity, if anxiety and greed, if you will, dominate. Instead, mining emotions from our lived experiences can be inspiring and the words will flow. Intuition? I believe in my gut. I think I was pretty good about killing my darlings but championing graphs, pages, even the jade on my book cover because my intuition guided me in the subtle ways readers can be lead. A character in my book, Jodi, who was my best friend and CNN senior executive producer, always said producing a newscast is like playing music. She literally felt the pacing of her show by topic and length of story. That’s how I use emotions in my writing process.
# Do you have any creativity tricks?
Super strong coffee first thing in the morning, then I think about the writing challenge I face, and go for a two mile morning walk. By the time I return to my office, I’m ready to write.
# What are your plans for future books?
I’m working on a political thriller based on an actual Los Angeles County deputy involved shooting that went viral back in 2015. I was a senior advisor and behind the scenes of how law enforcement chose to handle the shooting, that on social media, looked as awful as you’d expect. Who’s right, and who’s wrong when lives are at stake? Inspired by the old Tom Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities, is there ever justice when the justice system is designed to fail? So far, the characters are super fun to write.
# Tell us some quirky facts about yourself
I love to eat jello. Every color. I’m literally afraid to read the ingredients.