Spotlight: Karen Moline
Because she’s written more than 40 books, many of them best selling, it shouldn’t be a surprise to me that I find myself completely enraptured while listening to one of Karen Moline’s incredible stories. She has had an amazingly interesting life; starting at a party meeting the lead of the B 52’s, getting in for free at the infamous Mudd Club, spending time at the offices of Andy Warhol in the early 80s, discussing how to get cheap warehouse space with Jeff Koons, to more recently being friends with many well-known celebrities. Including the late and great Alan Rickman.
Karen has had what many would deem a fascinating life, and I am personally intrigued by the breadth of her experience. This includes the years that she spent in Paris working on her novel, London and Australia as an entertainment journalist, and from her home in New York City. Writing as a career is not easy for anyone, as no one wants to publish someone who hasn’t been published, and the so-called chicken and egg issue is difficult to scale. But she took advantage of opportunities that presented themselves and started as an editor before getting work as a writer. As a freelance writer in the 1990s, she helped pioneer working from home, and remembers what meeting a deadline truly means. Getting it done a week early because, of course, there wasn’t any email. There weren’t even fax machines. She had to send her submissions by mail. This wasn’t all that long ago chronologically, but it seems like forever technologically.
Her advice about working from home is; never miss deadlines, have a workstation, turn your personal phone off, set up a routine, and take time for yourself in the morning before starting work. Whatever time you would have spent commuting, give to yourself.
The fact that she was doing this back when it wasn’t even slightly the norm led me to conclude that Karen is not a woman to follow the herd. She is what I would call a definite trendsetter. She made a huge impression upon me when I first met her. I was a sophomore at Columbia University at the time and wanted more than anything else to be a writer. Karen completely embodied my expectation of what a writer in New York City would be. She was witty, intelligent, independent, fashionable, sarcastic, funny, eccentric, and completely and totally herself. I couldn’t have asked for a better role model.
Her career has spanned numerous publications and genres, including the Village Voice, Harper's Bazaar, and Condé Nast. She worked first as an entertainment journalist, then as a novelist and a ghostwriter. Her ghostwriting has led to numerous bestsellers listed by the New York Times. She’s dated famous men, attended glitzy parties, and has been to well-known haunts of the rich and famous. But despite this glamorous background, what stuck with me from the first time I met her, holding a little baby boy, was that she was a mother. And what has remained even more fascinating to me, as a woman without children myself, is that she so clearly and passionately wanted to be a mother. She adopted her son, now a young adult, from Vietnam as a baby.
The going has not been easy. Her work suffered when he was younger because he had trouble sleeping, and she had to shuffle between late nights tending to a child and then trying to concentrate and engage the creative side of a brain to write and meet deadlines. But she did this with the knowledge that she needed to take care of herself as well as her child. So she accepted help. She was able to afford a nanny for a few hours a day and also joined supportive mother’s groups in which they would help watch each other’s children. She also learned to work while she watched her child. She moved to a building in Manhattan with private playgrounds where she could watch him play while she wrote. Today she wouldn’t pretend that the going was easy, but I can also say that I’ve never heard her even slightly complain. She remains a remarkable inspiration to me as an independent woman who determined the life that she wanted to live and has lived it. Her advice to other single mothers would be: always accept help and always care for yourself.
If you do not take care of yourself, you cannot take care of anyone else. Even if it means that you sit on the bathroom floor and cry for 10 minutes, that's still your time.
Karen is a fierce advocate for women, adoption, and international adoption reform. She would say that her most proud moments have come from watching her son grow up into a loving and good human being, despite the many hardships and obstacles that he has had to face. She also takes pride in her work as a ghostwriter, where she has helped others achieve their goals of publishing and finding their voice. A ghostwriting position demands that one's ego is completely surrendered to the art. She gives others the ability to express themselves in ways that they would not be able to alone. This is truly a selfless artistic contribution from a lovely, caring woman.
