By Stuart Warner

(@copyright 2022 Jon Franklin, Lynn Franklin and Stuart Warner)

Back before the turn of the century, before Facebook, Twitter and Zoom, nonfiction writers from around the country could gather around their computers on email message boards to discuss their craft, often referred to as Literary Journalism.

One of these message boards was called WriterL, run by two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist and author Jon Franklin and his wife, the mystery novelist Lynn Franklin.  An article in The New York Times likened the site to the “Paris of the 1920s.” Discourse was passionate and stimulating – if mostly sober and distant.  Alas,  the process was slow  – it often took a few days  to get your thoughts posted and see the response from fellow members.

In addition to the Franklins, the group included a number of outstanding nonfiction writers, editors and educators. Among them: Pulitzer-winning editor and writing coach Jack Hart; Pulitzer-winners Connie Schultz and Sheri Fink;  award-winning authors  Michael Capuzzo, Caitlin Kelly, Don Obe, Mark Kramer and Mark Pendergrast; author, educator and former Washington Post magazine senior writer Walt Harrington and Poynter Institute writing guru and author Roy Peter Clark. 

Their discussions could go on for days, weeks, even months. Some debates, like the value of first-person writing, lasted years.

Jon and Lynn began the site when he was a professor at the University of Oregon in 1994.  They lived on about 50 acres in a rural county with little contact with writer friends.

And therein lies a tale of how WriterL got its name and how it has now become a book, “A Place Called Writer L: Where the Conversation Was Always About Literary Journalism.”

The Franklins wanted to find a way to share their thoughts about nonfiction writing and hear from others.  The internet was still fairly new, so Jon went to one of the university’s information technology folks and asked if it were possible to set up some kind of electronic message board where writers could converse through emails.

Within hours, the IT guy came back with a listserv program that could be shared with a group. Back then it was common to name such programs with an L for the type of listserv it was.  Like DogL for canine enthusiasts or KitchenL for cooks.

So naturally the technician called the Franklins’ listserv WriterL.

“I hated the name,” Jon recalls.

But Jon’s reputation – two Pulitzer Prizes and his seminal book on narrative nonfiction, “Writing for Story” – quickly drew writers to the new site.

“After we had gotten it up and running, we asked people to suggest ideas for a new name,” Lynn says.  “And that created an uproar.  People loved the name.”

So WriterL it was forevermore.  Or at least the next 15 years.

The Franklins originally intended the site for newspaper journalists, but it found a much wider audience among all descriptions of writers – nonfiction and fiction authors, freelance magazine writers, children’s books authors, educators, etc.  To weed out participants who weren’t serious, the Franklins charged a $20 annual fee, and most gladly paid. 

The electronic conversations, which included several hundred writers over the years, continued through the Franklins’ move to the East Coast but finally came to an end in 2009 as the news industry began to implode.

“It hurt to end it, but journalism was such a mess, and people didn’t have time,” Lynn says.  “I was writing almost all the posts. … But it was a painful decision.  People became like family.”

That might have been the last of WriterL but during a moment of boredom during the pandemic, I scrolled down to the end of my AOL.com email basket just to see what was there.

I joined the group in 2002.  For some reason I had saved a couple dozen WriterL posts from 2005.  Curious, I read through them.  The emails contained a fascinating discussion on the vision of nonfiction writers: Could you teach vision? Did nonfiction writers actually have the same kind of vision as artists in other mediums? If so, did art make good journalism?

The discussion lasted from early June through the end of August of that year.  I wondered what the contributors’ comments would sound like if I arranged them as if the writers were sitting around a table with Jon or Lynn debating the issue in real time; making sure not to take any of the posts out of context.

That thread led to a 10,000-word piece on what is now the first chapter of this book: “Oh, Say, Can You See the Writer’s Vision?”

I showed it to the Franklins and they both loved it.  Jon suggested publishing it as a short story. 

In the meantime, though, I discovered that I had saved more than 100 additional WriterL posts in another email account, which I no longer used.  It was easy to see at least two or three more topic threads that would make interesting chapters.

I asked Jon and Lynn if they had saved any more WriterL posts.  Lynn did a deep dive into her computer drives and found posts from seven more years.  We didn’t have everything but we had at least a million words from some of the country’s best writers.  The posts may have been 15 to 20 years old but the wisdom had only been enhanced by time.  Why not a book about the WriterL discussions?

It seemed like a daunting task … a MILLION words?  But as I began to sift through the digital files I realized that Lynn had edited them so well and organized them so efficiently with appropriate topic labels that I easily could pull together the threads with simple document searches.

In fact, it took me longer to locate the 60-plus contributors whose posts we used than it did to pull together 16 chapter threads – unlike me, most of them didn’t keep their AOL email accounts that were so popular back then. 

We wanted to make sure the writers saw their posts and that we were using them in context. context.

Everyone we contacted seemed enthusiastic about the project.

At that point, all we needed was a big finish.  I remembered a section of Jon’s book “A Wolf in the Parlor.” I had used it several times in writing presentations as an example of why emotion-centered nonfiction writing could have a powerful impact on readers.

Jon agreed to share it and we had our book. 

The result, we think, is a series of robust conversations about the art of nonfiction writing, conversations that may have taken place 15 to 20 years ago, but are still relevant and enlightening to writers today.