Everybody wants to be Terry McMillan - Cover Story

Terry McMillan. For readers and writers alike, her name alone conjures up images of multimillion dollar deals, best-selling novels and Hollywood movies. For the woman who many believe single-handedly brought cultural diversity to best-selling fiction, it's been a long, sometimes challenging, but mostly fulfilling journey. "A lot has changed since 1987," McMillan reflected in a recent interview with BIBR. That was the year her first novel, Mama, was published. It was released in hardcover on January 15, 1987, by Houghton Mifflin, with a conservative first printing of 5,000. But before the actual publication date, the run had to be increased by 2,500 more copies.

This year, on January 15, the paperback edition of her latest novel, her fifth, A Day Late and A Dollar Short (Signet, $7.99, ISBN 0-451-20494-8), hits stores. When the novel was first published last January in hardcover, the initial print run was 700,000--nearly a hundredfold increase over her first novel. A Day Late was on the New York Times best-seller list for 12 weeks. "When they told me that the paperback A Day Late was going to be introduced on January 15, I said, `That's a great date.'" It will mark the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of her very first novel.

How does it all feel? "It feels great," the 50-year-old author says. "It feels like a different industry. Publishers are certainly different. It's much better for first-time authors now. The readers are the same though," she says. "There's just a lot more of them," she adds, in something of a mild understatement.

But 1987 wasn't the beginning for McMillan. "I became interested in writing in college," she says, taking us back at least 15 years. "It was quite by accident. I wrote a poem in reaction to something I was going through, and a friend saw it. When he asked if he could include it in his literary magazine, I was floored."

Her friend's interest gave her a bit of confidence. "I thought, maybe I'm a poet and don't know it," says McMillan chuckling.

Still, with the exception of her college term papers, McMillan had done little writing, although she was an avid reader. "In junior college at Los Angeles City College, I took Afro-American literature. That was my first introduction to black writers. I was amazed--Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes--there were a lot of people who inspired me." However, McMillan quickly points out that although Hurston and Hughes were a source of inspiration, she didn't consider trying to emulate them. "I was just reading them at the time, not thinking of myself in any way as a writer. I was just in awe that there were black people who wrote books." But McMillan believes their works had a subconscious effect on her. "Many years later, remembering their works affected me and my writing."

It wasn't until McMillan had enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley that writing began to ease its way into her life. "I was majoring in sociology, but a new magazine, Black Thoughts, was starting up, and they were drafting anyone they could find. So when they approached me, I said, `Sure, I can write a sentence or two.' I began writing editorials--mostly political articles." After that, McMillan was recruited as a writer for the university magazine.

When she had to declare her major in her junior year, it was obvious that sociology wasn't in her blood, but then writing wasn't the obvious choice for her either. "I wasn't clear on what I could do with my sociology major--besides becoming a social worker, and that didn't seem very fulfilling. But I was going to choose sociology anyway." Her advisor had a different point of view: "What about journalism?" he suggested. She was taken aback by his suggestion. "He had been reading my articles," McMillan says. "He pulled out of me that writing gave me a great deal of satisfaction." But even with her admission, McMillan still couldn't see writing as a career. "I only saw it as a hobby because it wasn't difficult for me," she says.

Then, her teacher asked her something that made her think a bit differently. "Whoever said that what you choose to do in life had to be difficult?" he asked her. McMillan thought that was a good question, but still, she was unsure. She confided all her doubts to her advisor: "I don't know many black writers," she argued. "I'm in college, I need a job when I get out." But her advisor had an answer for every one of her objections, and gave her a piece of advice she now gives to her own students, "He said, `You know, many people choose majors because they feel it's the right thing to do, or because it's the most intelligent thing to do, or because it's what their parents want them to do. Think about what you really want to do!'" A few days later, McMillan switched her major to journalism.

It didn't take her long, however, to discover that journalism didn't give her everything she was looking for either. "I found journalistic writing stifling," she says. "And then, in my senior year, I took a fiction class." The instructor was Ishmael Reed, the poet, essayist and satirical novelist. "That's basically how this started. Ishmael triggered a lot in me. He told me that I had a great voice and whatever I do, don't go to graduate school," McMillan recalled, chuckling. "He said the only thing that would make me a writer was to write," she adds, "and read!"