Friday Q&A

We're chatting with author Lauren Mechling

Ladies, I’m still trying to turn the corner with this flu, so no links today. But we do have this great conversation.

Lauren is a novelist and editor who also currently works at The Guardian, and who has a delightful new book, The Memo, coming out this spring. We became internet friends several years ago—I can’t remember exactly how—and she’s become one of my favorite people to text-gossip with early in the morning before anyone else is awake. Here, we chat about her new book, the benefits of being an early riser, and more.

Early in your career, you worked as a crime reporter. How did you get from there to writing novels?

I was already writing novels when I was a cub reporter on the police beat for The New York Sun. I’d come to the paper with clips on the silliest subjects - things like the gummy bear diet and seven minutes with Pamela Anderson (who, for the record, was smart as they come). I’m pretty sure The Sun’s publisher took a look at my work and thought it would be funny to stick me on the crime beat. 

I’d recently reported a story for a British paper that involved interviewing the author of Gossip Girl. It was early days, and the series was making waves among the conservative parents of Kensington and Notting Hill. I flew through the books as I prepared for my interview and got it in my head to try my hand at a comic novel about poorly behaved teenagers in New York, where I grew up. I conscripted my brilliant friend Laura Moser to work on it with me.

So I was waking up at 6 am and writing YA fiction for an hour, and then spending my days in “the shack” - as the press offices at One Police Plaza were affectionately called. I was actually at my desk there, not breaking news (as usual), when I learned that somebody wanted to buy our manuscript. It had been on submission for so long that I hadn’t just given up hope but I’d truly forgotten about the damn thing. The publisher offered us $8,000 for The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber. It became a bestseller.