September 29, 2006 Host: Charisse Dengler Guest: Julie Hilden
Julie Hilden discusses her career as an author and speaks about how her creative writing career has been influenced by her legal training. Duration: 00:07:41
Charisse: Hello everyone, and welcome to another LawCrossing podcast. This is Charisse Dengler, and I am here today with Julie Hilden; and we are going to talk to her a little bit about creative writing. Julie, thanks for being with us today.
Julie: Thanks for having me.
Charisse: Ok, I guess you can start of by telling us a little bit about what made you go into the legal field in the first place?
Julie: Originally, in college, I was a philosophy major and it seemed like law school was something that I'd be relatively good at and also that I could make a living with, which was important to me because I didn't have a lot of family support at the time. And I did find it really interesting, but I found later that I really prefer writing. And so, I've been moving my career toward being, as much as I can, a full-time writer.
Charisse: Ok, and where did you go to law school at?
Julie: I went to Yale Law School, and then, I went from there to Cornell for a Masters in Fine Arts.
Charisse: Ok, and can you kind of give me a brief overview of the career choices that you made from the time that you graduated law school until now?
Julie: Well, the first thing I did was to clerk for Stephen Breyer, who was then the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. And that was a terrific experience and really interesting. Although, I have to say, in the end I found it more interesting to clerk on the District Court, which I ended up doing later—I'm skipping a little bit in time—with Judge Kimba Wood in New York, because it's more fast-paced. There's more, sort of, new issues, and it's a lot less academic-ey, like law school. There's so many things that come into the district court, where you're just like, "What is this?" you know, "They're asking for this release. Can they get it?" And so I thought that that was more fun.
Charisse: Cool! So, so far you have written two novels?
Julie: A memoir and then a novel.
Charisse: Ok, can you give me a little brief summary of both of them?
Julie: Well, the first is a memoir called The Bad Daughter. It's about my, basically, my bad relationship with my mother, who then fell really ill. And it's about the conflict of, you know, of basically feeling like, "Wow, here's a parent that I don't like or respect very much and treated me really badly, but now they're ill and they're dying." And I think a lot of people do go through that same conflict. And then the novel is about—the novel is sort of about a "what if" situation, and it's called Three. And the situation is: what if you're with a partner who just can't stay faithful? You know, do you marry them anyway? And one of the characters decides, "Ok. I'm going to—I'll still marry the person but I have to know about all the cheating, and I need to be there."
Charisse: Ok. So, did you always know you wanted to be a writer from when you were really young?
Julie: Well, I loved, loved, loved to read in the sense of just reading a huge tremendous amount. And I was one of those kids that went to the library and came back home with a stack of books that was taller than I was. That was basically all I was doing, was reading. So, I don't know when it came to be that I envisioned, "Wow, maybe I could be a writer, also."
Charisse: And so, whenever you were in Law School, I am sure you had some classes on legal writing and stuff like that. Do you think that that influenced your writing style in any way?
Julie: Well, I mean, I think usually it was just the guidance that you would get on a brief or a memo that you were writing in law school. And I like the clarity of really good legal writing, that's just sort of like, "here's how it is"—it has to be extremely clear, extremely precise, and hopefully that influences my fiction writing, too. The clearer you are, the clearer someone who is reading your fiction can envision what you're describing.
Charisse: Right. Since, I guess, most authors sort of write from their own experiences, have you ever considered writing anything with a legal thriller type setting?
Julie: You know, I think it would make a lot of sense for me to do that, in terms of making money and stuff. But I just haven't been inspired to do that yet. I am interested in the ethics questions in the law; so I think that if I did write one, I would probably write one about someone being in a very difficult spot ethically and having to figure out what to do in that spot.
Charisse: Are you currently working on anything right now?
Julie: I have a young adult novel that's out with the editors that's about four psychic children. And I am hoping that someone buys it soon. But you never know, and everyone tells me that it's a hard market. And I am trying to move into writing something, a kind of book that I've never written before.
Charisse: Right, that would be really cool, because then all three of your books would be sort of different; and with most people, it's not like that.
Julie: Well, most people may be smarter than me, because what's smarter to do is to, basically, build on your same audience, stay in the same genre, and write, say, three legal thrillers. But I think I have been in the process of finding out what I really, really wanted to write. And so, it hasn't been great, career-wise, because it's hard to build an audience, but for me it was the right thing to do.
Charisse: What advice would you give to people in the legal field who want to get into some sort of creative writing? Like, maybe they like the writing part of the legal field but don't necessary like the law or practicing. What advice would you give to them?
Julie: Well, I would say that, definitely, start to do the writing, and see what you are really enjoying doing. And even if it's one hour a day, or just one hour each weekend day, because you'll find that if you write that much, you'll end up with, actually, quite a lot of pages at the end of the month. And I think that, often, people set too high of standards, and they're like, "Well, I'm going to write a novel while I'm practicing." I would prefer to say to people, "No," have your goal be, "I'm going to work on a novel for two solid hours every weekend while I'm practicing." And that's actually doable. And if you want guidance on the writing, you could try to take writing classes at night, or you could leave and try to go to a Masters of Fine Arts program, like I did. Or you could just find friends in your circle who are writers and exchange work with them. Or just people who are really smart readers and who are willing to read your work for you. And then my overall most important piece of advice is: make sure you know what genre you're writing in because so many books get rejected because they are neither one thing nor another. And I've had this problem myself. So, if you're writing a legal thriller, say, make sure you've read, like, 30 legal thrillers and you understand sort of what readers expect. Not that you should write something unoriginal, but that you should write something original and satisfy expectations.
Charisse: Ok, great advice! Thank you so much, and thanks a lot for being with us today. And we wish you lots of luck in the future.
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