Author, lawyer to share secrets of dual career
As a practicing attorney and best-selling author, Scott Turow is a master at writing suspenseful legal thrillers.
The Chicago native will turn his investigative talents toward personal reflection when he speaks on "How I Got To Be Two Things: Humorous Reflections on Having Two Careers" at 2 p.m. Sunday at Aurora University's Crimi Auditorium, 407 S. Calumet Ave., Aurora.
After earning a master's degree at Stanford with a fellowship in creative writing, Turow entered Harvard Law School and wrote the first of three non-fiction books, "One L: An Inside Account of Life in the First Year at Harvard Law."
Turow served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago before becoming a partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.
His books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. His gripping "Presumed Innocent" was adapted into a movie with Harrison Ford.
In June, Turow will receive the Harold Washington Literary Award in Chicago.
Turow recently took time to talk with the Daily Herald about his career.
Q. What did you want to be when you grew up?
A. From the time I was 10 or 11 years old, I wanted to be a novelist. My parents wanted me to be a doctor. I am one of those lucky people who's living their dream.
Q. You were born, raised and now live in the Chicago area. In your books, is Kindle County Chicago?
A. When I started writing "Presumed Innocent," I was about a year out of my experience of working at the district attorney's office in Boston. Initially, I began writing about Boston, but since I don't keep a journal, my daily experience ended up infiltrating my novelistic world.
So I ended up with a city the size of Boston but that otherwise resembles Chicago. It is more Chicago than anywhere else.
Q. How do you transition from being the novelist involved with the heavy emotions of your complex characters to being the person Scott Turow?
A. The problem with being a young writer is an inability to switch off what I call "the writers' disease." It needs to be a learned habit. For me, the reality of having a job, as I do being a lawyer, helps me create a boundary.
Q. Is writing a novel similar or different than preparing a file for court?
A. The two are more similar than people realize in the sense that editing a novel and editing a brief are similar enterprises. The big difference is rhetoric and subject matter. Lawyers cannot write about emotion and novelists do.
Obviously in the beginning, when you are dredging things out of your own heart for a novel, it is much different than writing a brief, where you are governed by the law.
The whole process where you try to image and weave certain facts and legal principles together and the idea in a novel where there are certain moments that you want to reach are similar.
Q. How did you develop the idea to write "Ordinary Heroes?"
A. I was determined to write a book that followed my father's course in World War II from October of 1944 to the end of the war in May of 1945. I knew where my characters were going to be.
I think almost everyone's creative process is helped by having some kind of fixed element that you have to imagine your way around.
Q. Do you start a novel with an outline?
A. I can't sit down and begin a first draft until I know where I am going, and that usually means thinking of the ending. So I start by just writing for a year, making notes and writing little dialogues and various scenes. Then, when I can see that this or that will happen, I can begin writing the draft.
Right now, I am writing the sequel to "Presumed Innocent" 20 years later. There are still huge parts of the book I have to figure out and there will be changes between drafts.
Q. How do you name your characters, such as Barrington Leach?
A. I had a college classmate named Leach and it was one of those grand old New England names. Barrington, Huffinton and Darlington, whatever it was going to be, I wanted it to be one of those guys with two last names. In little cameos, I will pick a person to honor, but that is rare.
Q. Do you call upon experts to get details accurate?
A. As time goes on, I increasingly use the help of experts such as a pathologist and a toxicologist. I want to be accurate and write within the boundaries of reality.
Q. Your expression "with bovine indifference" is great imagery. Have you a list of expressions to use someday?
A. "Bovine indifference" is certainly something I had in my head before I put it down on the page. Is it written down in a list somewhere? Generally not.
Occasionally there are things in dialogue that I want to work in, especially when people in the book speak in a way that I don't.
A large part of the new novel will be narrated by a 28-year-old, so I am going to have to make a studied effort to reform my own lexicon to make it conform to the way younger people talk. That will involve idioms I don't commonly use.
Q. What instrument do you play in the Rock Bottom Remainders?
A. I don't play an instrument. I am up there as an emblem that my colleagues do not take themselves too seriously. A couple of times a show they let me go out there and sing off-key. (Rock Bottom Remainders raises money for charities. Check out www.rockbottomremainders.com)
Q. How do you have time to practice law, write and have a life?
A. Every day is very full. The key is that I enjoy everything I do. I adore my children and have wonderful friends.
Q. When does your next book come out?
A. I hope for the fall of 2009.
If you go
What: "An Afternoon with Author Scott Turow"
When: 2 p.m. Sunday; book signing will follow
Where: Crimi Auditorium, Aurora University, 407 S. Calumet Ave., Aurora
Cost: Free; sponsored by Aurora Public Library Foundation and Midwest Literary Series
Info: Registration requested at (630) 264-4101 or online at aurora.lib.il.us/programs