A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a
Behind-the-Scenes Look
I’ve been writing fiction for
most of my life. I studied creative writing in college at Barnard and graduate
school at NYU, taught fiction writing for a brief period, and have spent the
past twenty-odd years stealing time from my corporate job, my husband and kids,
and my friends to work on my novels. My life is centered around my art; and has
been for as long as I can remember. At my publisher’s suggestion, I wrote an
essay about being a writer called “This is a True Story,” which is available in
my new book, I Couldn’t Love You More.
In this essay, I discuss all the rejection and heartache that led up to the
publication of I Couldn’t Love You More.
The basic gist is that although my writing is very compelling, even gripping at
times, as a person, I’m not very interesting.
It’s true: I am boring and I
live a boring existence. Therefore, a behind-the-scenes look at my writing life
would be, sadly, a very tedious exercise. I get up, take my kids to school, go
to my office, work on my book during lunch, come home, make dinner, watch crime
shows, read, and then go to bed. Some nights I might meet friends for dinner,
but my routine rarely wavers. I do think, though, that because my day-to-day
life is so conventional, I’m able to tackle more risky material in my novels. For
instance, I Couldn’t Love You More
is about a stepmother who is forced to decide which of her children she’ll save
in a freak accident. Like the book’s narrator, Eliot Gordon, I am both a mother
and a stepmother. I also have three kids and two sisters. But that’s where the
similarities end. I mean, if I were out saving children in freak accidents all
the time, I’d never have the energy to write books, so in my case, having a
boring life is actually a blessing. Similarly, writing novels requires
herculean amounts of discipline and commitment. I write at least 60 or 70
drafts of a book over a minimum of four years. I Couldn’t Love You More
took six years to write, edit, revise and sell. Had I not been a boring,
middle-aged mother/office worker, I never would’ve finished it.
Here’s another thing to
consider: I was taught that an artist’s life is separate from her art, and that
knowing too much about a writer can diminish the experience of reading her fiction.
I don’t know if I believe this, especially since I love hearing about authors’
lives and their writing processes, particularly if they’ve had dysfunctional
childhoods or twisted love affairs. In fact, I’m usually get star struck around
writers whose books I’ve enjoyed. Unfortunately, with the exception of moving a
lot as a kid (17 times by the time I was 17), my life has been relatively normal.
In fact, I take a weird sort of pride in my normalcy, my ordinariness. So
here’s to all the average, ordinary women out there who are raising kids, going
to work, making dinner, watching crime shows—and writing the occasional novel.
Find Jillian on the web:
Website
About the book:
About the book:
With hilarious honesty, wrenching depth, and a knockout twist, I COULDN'T LOVE YOU MORE illuminates the unbreakable bonds of family and reveals the lengths we'll go to save each other, even as we can't save ourselves. From Goodreads.com
If you are in the US or Canada (or having a mailing address in the US/Canada), please be sure to enter the Rafflecopter to win 1 of 3 paperback copies of I Couldn't Love You More. You can also find the book in the following places:
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