Co-authoring September 3, 2012

MediaMonday for September 3, 2012: I Finally Finished My Novel, by Amy Tan. Source media is Amy Tan’s blog, August 27, 2012.

Darrelyn Saloom

Many people have had extraordinary lives or are imaginators of fabulous stories, but don’t have the skills, discipline, or time to write them. This is where ghost writers and co-authors work together to bring such stories to life. On Wednesday we’ll discuss the process of collaborative writing, whether as ghostwriter in the background or as a bylined co-author. Friday we’ll plunge deeper into the topic with Darrelyn Saloom, who co-authored with Deirdre Gogarty, My Call to the Ring, a Memoir of a Girl Who Yearns to Box.

My Call to the Ring is Gogarty’s memoir of rising from a suicidal depression to the boxing ring, eventually to become women’s world featherweight champion of the world.

More than just a blow-by-blow depiction of Deirdre’s training and physical discipline, My Call to the Ring is a tight-fisted story of a woman’s determination to fulfill her calling, even when it means knocking down such barriers as gender inequity and counter-punching prejudices and politics in her home country of Ireland. As Deirdre fights her way to the center ring, she faces off with herself, finally allowing that self to love another person.

Deirdre Gogarty

At eleven, Gogarty knew she wanted to be a boxer in Ireland, a country that banned women from the sport at the time. She managed to find a gym to workout and spar, and in her late teens the great Pat McCormack became her trainer. After a few underground fights, she left her homeland and family and moved to the United States to pursue boxing.

Now retired from competing, Gogarty is a graphic artist by day and trains boxers at night with her American coach, Beau Williford, at Ragin’ Cajun Boxing Club (where she married Victor Morrison in the ring on St. Patrick’s Day).

Although she co-wrote My Call to the Ring with champion boxer, Deirdre Gogarty, Darrelyn Saloom’s pugilistic passions are confined to a keyboard. Most of her time is spent south of I-10 in Louisiana on a farm with her husband, a cat, a blind dog, and thoroughbred racehorses. She also wander the back roads in search of things old and guest blogs for Jane Friedman at www.janefriedman.com.