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couple of weeks rereading and annotating them with a highlighter, marking those parts I wanted to
include. My next step was to set the notes aside and try to imagine what the chapters of the book
would look like. The notes are unmediated experience, and now it is time to mediate it, give it a
structure. I have to decide what I’m going to do with my experience.
With Newjack, I knew I’d have a chapter about my training at the academy. And that it should come
at the beginning of the book. I also knew I’d have a chapter about New Year’s Eve and the fires that
the inmates set in the cell blocks, which would come toward the end. I knew that somewhere past the
middle of the book I’d write about the day I was slugged in the head and spit on. That was the point at
which I began to hate all the inmates, and it was an important point in my personal story. Once I have
a few of these fixed points, I use them to figure out where to put everything else.
Have you always been so organized?
No, when I was a beginning writer the structure often became apparent to me only after I’d begun
writing—sometimes after I’d written a lot. I’d start without a plan and see where my interests took
me. But that method wasn’t very efficient. I wasted a lot of time on dead ends.
Once you’ve sketched a rough outline, or list, do you start writing the text in a linear fashion?
No. Next I try to fill in that list a little. I open up separate documents on my computer: “Chapter 1
notes,” “Chapter 2 notes,” etc. Then as I revise the notes I create subsequent files: “Chapter 2 notes
1.1,” “Chapter 2 notes 1.2,” etc. I go through revisions of the notes for each chapter in much the same
way that I’ll later revise the chapters themselves.
Do you do all your work on the screen of your computer?
No, not always. If something’s really hard, I might write it out by hand first. Also, I’m not smart
enough to keep track of all that information while it is still in the computer. I print things out
frequently—it really helps me to have hard copies.
So what does your desk look like when you start to write?
On the day I begin work on, say, Chapter 2, I have the latest hard copy of “Chapter 2 notes” in front
of me. To my left, I have my original five hundred pages of single-spaced notes, which I’ve annotated
and marked up. To my right, I have the books I imagine I’ll quote from or refer to. Then I do the actual
composing on the computer.
How many drafts do you typically go through?
Anywhere between five and ten.
Do you write quickly?
I write more quickly about my personal experiences than I do when I am writing discursively about