{"id":2232,"date":"2015-02-04T17:55:29","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T00:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/?p=2232"},"modified":"2015-02-04T17:55:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T00:55:29","slug":"harper-lees-first-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/harper-lees-first-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Harper Lee’s first draft?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"To_Kill_a_Mockingbird\"<\/p>\n

Harper Collins announced a July, 2015 publication of Harper Lee’s second novel after a hiatus of more than 50 years. (And I thought\u00a0I\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>took a long time to write a book!) It turns out the “new” novel, titled Go Set a Watchman,<\/em><\/a> isn’t a book that took half a century to write but a manuscript written in the 1950’s, recently discovered by the 88-year-old author’s lawyer.\u00a0 (Now here my imagination goes wild and I imagine a hoax or get-rich quick scheme by some unscrupulous agent…)<\/p>\n

Word is, Harper Lee actually wrote Go Set a Watchman\u00a0<\/em>(already available for pre-order on Kindle<\/a>) before<\/em> she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.\u00a0<\/em> It’s about a grown-up Scout and “explores the tensions between a local culture and a changing national political agenda; family arguments and love,” according to Amazon.\u00a0 Her editor at the time thought the flashbacks to childhood were the strongest and urged her to re-write the story.\u00a0 To Kill a Mockingbird <\/em>was published in 1960 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize the following year.<\/p>\n

It sounds like Harper Lee’s lawyer has found what we writers all have an abundance of: Shelved manuscripts.\u00a0 First drafts.\u00a0 Rejects.\u00a0 That doesn’t mean Harper Lee’s first novel wasn’t worthy of publication necessarily.\u00a0 We have all written numerous drafts and various iterations of our stories — and we have all been guided or pressured by editors or agents. Harper Lee was no different.<\/p>\n

Will the newly discovered old novel be any good?\u00a0 The manuscript when “found” by the lawyer friend, was said to be complete and ready to go — with the exception of some light copy-editing.\u00a0 In any case it should make the venerable author, her agent, publisher, and lawyer a heap of money as it’s sure to be a commercial success and will undoubtedly be optioned for a movie.<\/p>\n

Excuse me now, I must go and print out copies of all my shelved manuscripts and keep them with my published ones.\u00a0 Just in case…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harper Collins announced a July, 2015 publication of Harper Lee’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[295,296,239,297,7],"class_list":["post-2232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-favorite-authors","tag-harper-lee","tag-literary-fiction","tag-to-kill-a-mockingbird","tag-writing-process"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2232"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2239,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions\/2239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}