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 < back to authors list Dorothy Seyler:
The publisher returned the rights to Seyler, and she went back to her original idea for the book -- to include the elements that are part of the critical reading process: irony, tone and metaphor. "I wanted to show how all of these elements make someone a critical reader of argument," said Seyler. Rewritten, the book, now titled Read, Reason, Write, was sold to Random House. Random House tetxbooks later were sold to McGraw-Hill. In its fifth edition in 1999, Read, Reason, Write may have had a bumpy beginning but has gone on to become Seyler's best-selling text. In 1999, it won a Text and Academic Authors McGuffey Award, given to books which have proven their success through longevity. The first section of Read, Reason, Write focuses on reading for content. The second section turns to reading for attitude, for tone. The third section explores the elements of argument. The book also includes an anthology of readings on current issues. This was a new approach for books on argument at the time, said Seyler, but many competing books now use this approach. The mimicking doesn't bother Seyler: "It's the best form of flattery." The book is used at Wayne State, Western Illinois, and Rutgers, among others. Through each edition, Seyler has made some changes, including: Seyler has also written Doing Research, in its second edition in 1999; The Reading Context, in its second edition in 2000; Steps to College Reading, in its second edition in 2001; and Patterns of Reflection, in its fourth edition in 2001. Doing Research is organized the way research is taught to students, Seyler said. "It deals with the stumbling blocks students face when doing documentation," she said. Steps to College Reading is a lower-level book meant to prepare adults to read college-level texts. "The challenge with this lower-level book was to find readings that would be of interest to adults, but that would be easy for them to read," said Seyler. She said Steps and The Reading Context were the hardest for her to write. "It was difficult but challenging to write the texts to students at that level," she said. "I used a lot of bullets and guideline lists, visuals that would break up the challenging flow of print." Patterns of Reflection is a first-semester freshman composition reader with genuine samples of student papers. "All of my books contain real student papers," Seyler said. "This isn't true of all books. Using student papers offers a different voice. If authors write the sample papers, they end up simply writing a blend of what they would normally write along with a blend of dumb sentences. That's not what students do." When the sample papers are genuine, said Seyler, students have at least one piece in a chapter that they can relate to, that isn't professionally written. The sample writings in her books come from students in her own classes who write A papers. Seyler said although she enjoys having written her books, she doesn't always enjoy the struggle of getting them out. "When I find the right piece for a particular chapter, that's a nice feeling," she said. "It's also nice to think in terms of being a macro teacher. That I'm in a lot of classrooms in a way. Since my books are often used by teaching assistants or part-timers, many of them brand-new teachers, they are not only for the students but are a way to teach new teachers. It's like being at a conference, only I just send out the book." Seyler said breaking into writing in the English field is tough. With so many books and so many mergers, she said, it's hard to find a new book to do, but she gives this advice for authors trying to break into print: When writing a book, said Seyler, authors have a dual audience: students and instructors. "Students won't use it unless the instructor adopts it," she said. "You have to get instructors to like it first." Authors, she said, also need to be disciplined about writing: "Set a time to work. Set deadlines. Have a deadline for each step. Break it into parts." A colleague recommended Seyler join TAA in 1997. "TAA allows me to talk with other authors and share ways to protect ourselves from mergers, etc.," she said. Since she has become a TAA member, she said, she has learned to pay more attention to contracts. Soon after becoming a member, she said, she went through the wording of her Allyn & Bacon contracts for Patterns, Steps and The Reading Context and negotiated the same rate for electronic rights as for print. "Whenever you try to negotiate, put out more than you want so you end up getting those things changed that are most important to you," she said. Another thing she was able to do is negotiate advances for subsequent editions. "They said they didn't do that, and I said for me you do," she said. "My books sell, and they don't want to stop publishing them. I didn't know when I started that I had that kind of power." "Authors need to realize that writing is a business," she said. "This is hard work. It has become important to me to pay attention to sales and what my contracts say. One of the ways editors try to con authors is to build up a romantic idea of having a book out there: 'You'll have your name in print'. But most books sell less than 8,000 copies. You don't always make a lot of money. It's hard to be successful doing this. Authors need to decide whether they want to write for a living. Once they do, they aren't going to sell their time short." Seyler said teaching constantly influences her writing. She practices the readings she chooses for her books in class. "I class test to determine interest, understanding and to see if I get the response I'm looking for," she said. "It's extremely important for me to be able to test material in class. To know which issues that would get students interested in writing. I don't think I could do a new book without being in the classroom." The classroom, she said, also allows her to offer her honors students the ability to publish outside the classroom. She uses her students' A papers as sample papers in her books. "When you occasionally get a student who says 'this is really neat stuff', that they enjoy reading and get excited about reading, writing and ideas, that's what I enjoy most," Seyler said. "Teachers have to believe that they have more impact than they have at the moment. We hope that down the road our advice will be remembered by students. I'm in classrooms all over the country through my books. I hope that I can make students better readers, writers and thinkers." Seyler lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She has one daughter, Ruth, born in 1966. She likes to play tennis, which she has played competitively since she was 11. She now plays doubles and says she enjoys the exercise, competition and being with friends that tennis provides. She also enjoys playing golf and traveling, and combines the two whenever she can. She has played golf at several resorts with famous golf courses. She hopes to someday play in Europe at St. Andrews, the home of golf. — reported by Kim Pawlak, 1999 |
