Dear Readers,
This Q&A is for writing-related questions; if you have questions about my novels, please visit their specific pages. Thank you!
~ Jenna.
| Did you always want to be a writer? |
Yes, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve never wanted to be anything else, and that’s lucky for me, since the only things I’m good at are writing, talking about writing, teaching writing, and working in the food service industry. You should always tip well; you never know when you might end up in a server’s book.
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| Where do you get your ideas? |
I always envy writers who say, “I get my ideas from headlines”—that seems like such a practical, efficient thing to do. I get my ideas from some mysterious dimension halfway between reality and Elsewhere, where the characters exist until they come down onto the page. My stories always start with character first, a person who materializes as a mental presence and then starts feeding me scraps of information. Sometimes those snippets don’t make it into the final cut, but they’re often indicative of who the character is. For instance, one of the first things I knew about Anna in Those Who Save Us was that she was afraid of July 4th fireworks because they reminded her of gunfire in Nazi Germany—signifying she was a trauma survivor.
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| Do you base characters on real people? |
Not all of them, but… yeah, sometimes. It’s more that I’m “inspired by” actual people, as they say on TV. What I’ll do is siphon a significant trait from a person—one I think is indicative of a core characteristic, like honesty, bravery, self-consciousness, physical awareness—and plug it into a fictional situation. That’s when the fun starts, because through the alchemy of writing, characters walk away from their real-life counterparts and become their own selves.
But again, you should always be nice to writers. I once had these awful neighbors who tortured me at every opportunity, and I kept wanting to say, “Are you crazy? You know I’m a writer, right? Don’t you know how bad I’m going to make you look?”
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| Do you know the end of your books before you start? Do you plan your books out or just write? |
I always knows the ends, and I’m a ferocious planner. The way I think of it is, writing a novel is such a Herculean task—Melville called it “the long sea voyage”—that if you don’t plan where you’re going, it could take you several decades to get there. The Webster’s definition of plot is “to chart out in points.” That’s what I do, I make outlines, and it helps me keep a book’s momentum going. Much of writing a novel is about architecture. And for those of you who worry that blueprints kill creativity, an outline isn’t set in stone: for Those Who Save Us I had eleven of them.
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| How did you get an agent and get your book published? |
I found my amazing, phenomenal, fierce and fantastic agent through www.literaryagents.com, and she got Those Who Save Us published by matchmaking the novel with the right fabulous and brilliant editor at Harcourt.
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| So you don’t need “connections” to get published? If I’ve written a novel like yours, can I send it to you to read and maybe give to your agent? |
I’m flattered, and I’ll be crossing my fingers and sticking pins in my Urban Outfitters voodoo doll for your success. But if I read all the worthy manuscripts people offer to send me, I’d never have time for my own writing! And I have a “Don’t pass, don’t tell” policy with my agent; otherwise I’d swamp her boat too. Keep researching your agent options, write a good book, write a good query. There are many, many excellent agents out there. And I’m living proof you don’t need “connections.”
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| Did you go to school for writing? |
I did indeed. I got a B.A. in English from Kenyon College, which qualified me to either enter the food service industry or get a master’s. I began waiting tables and meanwhile bombarding creative writing graduate programs with application essays with titles like, “You Can’t Teach Talent, But You Can Hone It” and “The Fictional Characters I Want To Meet In Heaven.” Five years later, I submitted a more humble petition to Boston University and they let me in. My M.A. in Creative Writing taught me to use criticism as a devil’s advocate tool and develop my own analytical muscles, so every single choice I make when writing, from structure to word choice and punctuation, is justified. And once I had my degree, I was able to inflict myself on undergraduate writing students.
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| What is your writing routine? |
I’m very superstitious about my routine. I write at home, in a room in my apartment called “The Scriptorium” (the former owner kindly left a brass plaque proclaiming this above the door). I used to smoke, but since I gave that up, there has to be very good and strong coffee. I get up, clean my apartment, walk Woodrow the black Lab, answer reader email, then go into the Scriptorium and shut the door, on which there is an index card that says, “Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a good bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work” (Flaubert). I do some throat-clearing in canvas-covered Borders notebooks, using ultra-fine-point Sharpie pens (no other writing implement will do): I’ll write how cranky I am, list tasks, wax indignant over somebody looking at me funny or global warming. Then, at some point, a switch flips and I start writing about the characters, how they were behaving the day before, what they’re going to do today. When I’ve done enough whining and planning, I’ll take a deep breath and jump onto my laptop.
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| Who’s your favorite writer? What’s your favorite book? |
Oh, gosh, this question is like going to the video store—remember doing that, in the olden days?—and having all the movies you wanted to see fly right out of your head. I have a lot of favorite writers, and I gravitate to each depending on my mood. The same for books; I revisit specific novels for comfort, laughter, inspiration, wisdom. Here are lists of my favorite authors and the beloved novels I read over and over.
Writers
Larry McMurtry
William Styron
Stephen King
Anne Tyler
Ann Patchett
Joanna Trollope
Elizabeth Berg
Richard Yates
Philip Roth
Russell Banks
Ethan Canin
Jennifer Haigh
Elizabeth Strout
Laura Ingalls Wilder
T.C. Boyle
Books
Shining Through (Susan Isaacs)
Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)
Terms of Endearment (Larry McMurtry)
Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)
Sophie’s Choice (William Styron)
The Stand (Stephen King)
The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley)
The Storm Season (William Hauptman)
Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh) …I re-read my favorite kids’ books every year!
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| Who’s your favorite male character? Your favorite female character? |
I’m assuming you mean in other novels, not my own. My favorite male character is Gus McCrae, the Texas Ranger from Lonesome Dove, though Rhett Butler is a contender. My favorite female character is Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With The Wind.
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| What’s your advice for aspiring writers? |
| Read as much as possible. And as Winston Churchill said, “Never give in. Never give in. Never give in.” |
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