How my Journalism Career Inspired My Fiction By Michelle Hillen Klump
How my journalism career inspired by fiction
By Michelle Hillen Klump
Sometime between fourth and fifth grade, when I realized I didn’t have the stomach to be a doctor or a veterinarian, I set my sights on what I considered to be the next best career – a writer. I loved books. As a child, I devoured Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries and tried to emulate L.M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon, writing scraps of poetry and stories, which I stuffed into my desk.
By seventh or eighth grade, after enough well-meaning teachers and family members hinted that I might find it difficult to support myself as a fiction writer, I decided I needed a Plan B. Initially, I settled on journalism as the perfect bridge between my love of writing and my interest in mysteries. By that time, I’d read about Nellie Bly and fantasized about going undercover to “get the story” and help right the wrongs of the world. What can I say? I was an idealistic young girl. My time as editor of the high school newspaper, writing the stories that had everyone in school talking the next day, cemented my decision—I was going to be a journalist.
After graduating from college with a journalism degree, I began what would be a nearly ten-year career as a newspaper reporter and one of the craziest, most interesting, and worthwhile chapters of my life. It meant late hours covering city hall hearings, afternoons parachuting into small towns to write quirky features, criss-crossing the state covering political corruption, unusual court cases and natural disasters. It was hard work, and low-paid, but it felt important, and it offered an education in how the world worked, or didn’t.
From the swirling detritus left in the aftermath of a tornado, I learned that a story’s heart can be found in the smallest details. While covering a manhunt, interviewing police in the dead of night on the side of a desolate mountain with a murderer on the run, I learned about fear and bravery. In New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina, I waded through fetid water and muck for an up close and personal view of both sheer devastation and the resilience of the human spirit.
Throughout my newspaper career, I learned a little about criminal investigations and court hearings, but most importantly, I learned about people, what motivates them, what causes them to break and what causes them to come together. I learned about research, how to follow a thread to the end, searching for a key bit of information, and how to find the experts to explain a complicated topic. And when a new piece of information came to light, I learned how to shift my narrative, and how to use a deadline to push through writer’s block.
When I left newspapers to move into a different sort of journalism covering commodity markets for business publications, it felt a little like a major part of my identity was suddenly gone. I had worn my press badge with pride, like it was as much a part of me as my green eyes. The loss of that identity hit me the most when a major story was happening around me and I wasn’t covering it, or on election nights, when I missed the adrenaline of writing to beat a deadline, (not to mention the traditional election night pizza).
Looking back on it, it is easy to romanticize my life as a newspaper reporter, which always felt as much a calling as a career. It certainly wasn’t all rainbows and roses. I had my share of run-ins with angry citizens and with less-than-supportive newsroom management. But it was a lot of fun, and it taught me many of the skills I use now that I’ve turned back to my old dream of writing fiction.
Through journalism, I learned about story structure and pacing, how to use dialogue effectively, how to capture a reader with the first paragraph, and how to sprinkle in enough interesting nuggets along the way to keep readers engaged until the very end. I learned how to write, even when you don’t want to, and how it’s better to have something on the page than nothing, because you can work with something, even if it’s a really terrible first draft. I learned the value of self-editing, and how to trust a good editor to take over after you’ve done as much as you can.
And of course, in addition to teaching me how to write, my newspaper career offered plenty of fodder for what to write. In my first forays into fiction writing, I wrote short stories using inspiration from some of the interesting people and places I’d encountered along the way. When I decided to finally write my first novel, I fell back on the old adage to “write what you know,” which is why Samantha Warren, the protagonist of my debut cozy mystery, A Dash of Death, is a former newspaper reporter, just like me.
Now that I’m more than a decade past the end of my newspaper career, I’m comfortable in this phase of my life. But I will always relish the opportunity to return to that world for a little while, even if only in the pages of a book.
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Michelle Hillen Klump began her writing career as a newspaper reporter, traveling the back roads of central Texas and Arkansas, reporting on everything from natural disasters to crime and corruption. She’s interviewed former presidents, covered a midnight manhunt through the Ozark Mountains, and learned the finer points of how to break a car window from a looter while covering a hurricane. Now, she uses her experiences as fodder for fiction, writing a cozy mystery series about a former reporter turned craft cocktail caterer.
Michelle lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and young daughter. When she’s not writing or working her day job, she enjoys gardening, reading, exploring Houston’s neighborhoods, hiking and biking, and creating craft cocktails for friends and family.
Find out more about Michelle on her website https://michelleklump.com/
A DASH OF DEATH
A Houston reporter-turned-mixologist mixes it up with murder in this series debut from Michelle Hillen Klump, superbly catering to fans of Diane Mott Davidson and Lee Hollis.BUY HERE
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