by Bella Stumbo
The writing phase is, of course, entirely different from the reporting stage. Reporting is fun; writing, at least in my view, is another version of hell on earth. When I returned to Los Angeles, tanned and serene, I had enough facts to satisfy myself. I had, in truth, too many facts. I had notebooks full of information on everything from La Jolla zoning issues to the Como Yei Indians, thought to be La Jolla's original inhabitants a few thousand years ago. I knew the details of Betty's dental work, where Dan got his hair cut, and how many balloons Linda floated at a birthday party she gave for a girlfriend. I had over-reported; I had no idea what to do with it all. Two people helped me.
First and foremost was my friend Noel Greenwood, then a senior editor at the Los Angeles Times and my former boss. There are not words enough to thank him for the time he put into discussing this story with me, helping me construct it, and then, line by line, editing at least three drafts from top to bottom. The fad that this book is merely long, rather than an encyclopedia on the destruction of one family, is due entirely to his editing skills—not to mention his black-hearted editor's pleasure in slashing a writer's priceless prose.
Second, but no less important, was the work done by my sister, Linda Goudge, in Denver. A computer whiz, she spent hours ferreting out the repetitions in my original manuscript, helping me recover quotes I had lost, advising me on content, and, not least, bickering with Noel over sections he wanted to cut and she wanted to save. They became at times almost a comedy team—here was one of the best editors the Los Angeles Times will ever see, sniping at my little sister, not a trained journalist but a well-read wife, mother, and scientist, who carped back, "He's cutting the wrong stuff!" Noel would growl, "She's given to excess, just like you."
When Linda and Noel had finished their work on the first drafts, a massively long manuscript still emerged. Editor Judith Regan was unsympathetic. "Cut it—a lot!" she commanded. Noel tried not to gloat, as he happily whacked out all the sections he wanted to cut in the first place. My sister persistently offered her own, alternative cuts. The bartering might still be going on, had it not been for two other friends who finally found themselves dragged into the process as arbiters: former Los Angeles Times writer Kathy Hendrix and Bret Israel, editor of the Times Sunday Magazine. Both spent countless hours poring over the manuscript, offering their own invaluable edits.
I also want to thank John Caldwell, Eric Furan, and Pat Olson for their support, and former Times writer Garry Abrams for daily black humor of the sort that perhaps only another book writer, sitting at home alone all day, facing the same subject week after week, can appreciate.
I will stop before these acknowledgments become truly tiresome. (But if you ever need the quickest, smartest transcriptionist around, call Paula Burns in Dallas.)
