Why We Write

by Meredith Maran

  With the 2011 publication of Sing You Home, Jodi Picoult stepped out from behind the writerly curtain and became an eager advocate for gay rights—the issue at the core of the novel and at the core of her family, which includes her gay son. Picoult is active on Twitter, where her profile photo shows her with silver duct tape over her mouth, “NO H8” stenciled onto her cheek, and her fingers arched to form a heart.

  THE VITALS

  Birthday: May 19, 1966

  Born and raised: Long Island, New York, and New Hampshire

  Current home: Hanover, New Hampshire

  Love life: Married to Tim Van Leer

  Kids: Samantha, 16; Jake, 18; and Kyle, 20

  Schooling: Graduated from Princeton University, 1987; master’s in education from Harvard; honorary doctorates from the University of New Haven and Dartmouth

  Day job?: No

  Honors and awards (partial listing): New England Book Award for fiction; Alex Award; BookBrowse Diamond Award; Lifetime Achievement Award from Romance Writers of America; Cosmo’s Fun Fearless Fiction Award; Green Mountain Book Award; Virginia Readers’ Choice Award

  Notable notes:

  • Picoult’s first unpublished work was a story called “The Lobster Which Misunderstood.” She wrote it at age five.

  • Although Jodi Picoult is known as one of the bestselling American authors, it was her tenth book that first hit the bestseller list.

  • Picoult wrote DC Comics’ Wonder Woman series from March 28 to June 27, 2007.

  Website: www.jodipicoult.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/jodipicoult

  Twitter: @jodipicoult

  THE COLLECTED WORKS

  Novels

  Songs of the Humpback Whale, 1992

  Harvesting the Heart, 1994

  Picture Perfect, 1995

  Mercy, 1996

  The Pact, 1998

  Keeping Faith, 1999

  Plain Truth, 2000

  Salem Falls, 2001

  Perfect Match, 2002

  Second Glance, 2003

  My Sister’s Keeper, 2004

  Vanishing Acts, 2005

  The Tenth Circle, 2006

  Nineteen Minutes, 2007

  Change of Heart, 2008

  Handle with Care, 2009

  House Rules, 2010

  Sing You Home, 2011

  Film and TV Adaptations

  The Pact, 2002

  Plain Truth, 2004

  The Tenth Circle, 2008

  My Sister’s Keeper, 2009

  Salem Falls, 2011

  Jodi Picoult

  Why I write

  I write because I can’t not write. Just ask my husband. If I have an idea circling in my brain and I can’t get it out, it begins to poison my waking existence, until I’m unable to function in polite company or even hold a simple conversation.

  When I’m actively writing, in the thick of a book, I’ll find myself hiding up in my attic office to get just one more scene down on the page before I go downstairs to dinner. A lot of times, that one scene will turn into two or three.

  But beyond the itchiness I’d feel if I weren’t able to write, I write because it’s a way of puzzling out answers to situations in the world that I don’t understand. The act of writing a book gives me the same experience that I hope reading it gives readers. It forces me to sort through the various points of view on a given issue or situation and ultimately come to a conclusion. Doing that might not change my mind, but it almost always gives me a stronger sense of why my opinion is what it is—a question we rarely ask ourselves.

  Riding a bike down a hill

  The way I feel about writing changes on a daily—or an hourly—basis. Sometimes it’s like riding a bicycle down a hill, with the wind whipping through my hair and my hands in the air. And then there are the times when writing feels like slogging through the mud that was left behind after Hurricane Irene.

  I’ve always seen writing as a job. Granted, it’s one I love to do, but it requires me to park my butt in a chair even when I don’t feel particularly motivated.

  Sometimes, it’s magical. The characters seem to breathe and take over. I hear their voices very clearly in my head. That’s why I’ve always called writing “successful schizophrenia”: I get paid to hear those voices. But at a certain point in every book, something happens that I never saw coming—at least, not consciously—and it’s exactly the puzzle piece the story is missing, the element that ties the threads of the book together. Characters seem to pick their own paths. They have an agenda that I don’t even know about until the conversation or the plot begins inching its way across the typed page. Even though I know the end of my books before writing a single word, I often find that the middle section—how I get from point A to point Z—is a delightful surprise.

  I’m often asked if I cry when I write. Of course I do! There are some scenes I’ve written, often between moms and kids, where I find myself sobbing at the keyboard. I know the characters better than I know anyone else, so it stands to reason that I’m emotionally invested in them.

  Physically, when I write, I feel the years. I’ve been a writer for two decades and like every other writer I know, I have tendinitis. A good day writing can mean a very bad day for my arm or shoulder. I remind myself it’s a pretty sweet problem to have.

  Remember me?

  I graduated from Princeton with a degree in creative writing/English. A lot of my classmates and I got feeler letters from literary agents at big agencies: William Morris, CAA. I sent out my creative thesis—a novel you should be thrilled to know you’ll never have to read—and didn’t get any bites.

  Since I’d never met anyone who was actually making a career out of writing, I had a backup plan. When I graduated from Princeton I had a job on Wall Street, writing bond-offering circulars for S&P and Moody’s. I hated it. Hated it! I worked ninety hours a week, and at one point I figured out that I’d written more than a thousand pages about the company that makes Fiats.

  When the stock market crashed in October 1987 I was delighted. I knew I’d be laid off, and I was. I used my severance package to buy a car and I moved to Massachusetts, where my boyfriend was living, and I got a job as a textbook editor.

  Every day I’d finish my work by ten in the morning. Then I’d close the door to my office and pretend to be really busy. Actually, I was writing my second novel. Over the next two years, I worked as a textbook editor, as a teacher of creative writing at a private school, as an advertising copywriter. I got an M.Ed. at Harvard. I taught eighth grade English at a public school, and I got married and pregnant.

  During that time, I kept pitching my novel to agents one at a time, picking their names out of Literary Marketplace. They all rejected me, some quite eloquently. Finally, one woman said yes. She was just starting her own agency. She’d never represented anyone, but thought she could represent me. I said yes, and she sold my first book in three months. That was twenty years ago, and she’s still my agent.

  After my books began to hit the New York Times list, I got a call from a bigwig New York literary agent. She wanted to fly me to New York to talk about representing me. I declined politely and said I had no intent of leaving my agent. I’m quite sure that this bigwig had no recollection that she’d been the very first agent to reject me.

  Although I was published by age twenty-three, I wasn’t making nearly enough money to support myself, let alone my family. My readership grew very slowly. I wasn’t an overnight success—far from it. I didn’t become a breadwinner until about 2004, when the paperback version of My Sister’s Keeper sold enough copies that people began to recognize my name.

  Home Depot time

  My hardest time as a writer was when I realized that I’d grabbed the brass ring. I’d published a bunch of books, and I still wasn’t a success.

  A lot of writers think of the publishing contract as the Holy Grail, but it’s not. It’s a huge mistake to think that just because your book is being printed, your publisher will pu
blicize it. If you’re a new author, it’s much more likely that they won’t. You have to stump yourself and find book clubs to talk to and go to book fairs and set up signings at bookstores and libraries—anything to get word of mouth going. Your publisher’s more likely to pay attention to your book if it starts magically selling. Then they might put some money into promoting it. It’s a vicious cycle.

  That’s why I was really disheartened when I was a young mom of three kids, and I’d had multiple books published, but I was still toying with the idea of getting a job application from Home Depot so I could help support my family.

  A movie deal isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be

  Another really stressful time was during the filming of the movie that was made of my book My Sister’s Keeper.

  I’d explained to the production company how critical the ending of that book was. I’d gotten letters from readers saying that the ending was the reason they’d flung the book at their friends, saying, “Just read it so we can discuss it.” The production company asked me to speak to the director they planned to hire before he signed on. I explained my concerns. He told me, “Yes, that’s the right ending for this story. I won’t change it, but if I have to for any reason, I’ll tell you why and I’ll tell you myself.”

  For two years, I helped him flesh out a script that was very close to the book. Then one day I got an e-mail from a fan who worked at a casting agency, telling me she had the script, and did I know the ending had changed?

  To this day that director has never explained why he changed the end of the story, but because he did, the movie isn’t anywhere near as powerful as the book. Apparently moviegoers agreed with me; the film wasn’t a success at the box office.

  The upside is that, as a result of that experience, I make sure I’m always offered creative control over my movie/television deals. That negative experience proved to me, and to people in the industry, that I know what I’m talking about.

  Can’t beat number one

  The best time I’ve had as a writer is every time I’ve found out that a book of mine is debuting at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s happened a few times, and it never gets old. I have to pinch myself to say, Wow, look how far I’ve come. When I’m number one, I know it’s not just my mom and her friends buying the book. I can remember the precise moment when my editor called with the good news. I’d write even if no one ever read my stuff, but it’s so gratifying to know that people do.

  Another amazing moment was when I did an event at the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta. Gone with the Wind is the book that made me want to be a writer. To sit at the desk where it was written had me trembling.

  Surprise!

  I know a lot of writers listen to music while they write, but I absolutely, positively cannot. Music is like Kryptonite to my writing.

  It might also surprise you to know that I personally answer every single e-mail I get. I don’t have an assistant, and I receive more than two hundred letters a day.

  Jodi Picoult’s Wisdom for Writers

  Take a writing course. It’s how you’ll learn to get and give feedback, and it’ll teach you to write on demand.

  There’s no magic bullet that’ll make you a success. If you write because you want to be rich, you’re in the wrong business. Write because you can’t not write, or don’t write at all.

  Write even when you don’t feel like writing. There is no muse. It’s hard work. You can always edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.

  Read. It’ll inspire you to write as well as the authors who came before you.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jane Smiley

  He put his arm around her, squeezed hard. He knew, of course, that she adored him, or admired him, or whatever it was. He was one of those sorts of men that women were wiser to stay away from, men who took an interest in women, and observed them, and knew what they were thinking.

  Darling, I should have been a different person. But I’m not.

  —Page 16, Prologue, Private Life, 2010

  Since her first book was published in 1980, Jane Smiley has written eleven novels, five nonfiction books, and three young adult novels.

  We’re talking Pulitzer Prize–winning, Lifetime Achievement Award–earning works of fiction and nonfiction, with topics as various as nineteenth-century farm life, an uncelebrated computer inventor, and the urban real estate boom of the 1980s. Smiley’s running start on a writing career was cultivated by four years at Vassar, followed by a Fulbright Fellowship—in Iceland; where else would she have gone to study the medieval literature known as the Icelandic sagas?—and a stint at the vaunted Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

  Jane Smiley is a scholar as well as a writer and lover of the novel. She returned to Iowa to teach in the MFA program from which she graduated, and she has judged many a literary contest, including the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. Unlike many other great intellects, Jane Smiley likes to share, as evidenced by her exuberant 2005 study, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. “If to live is to progress,” she wrote, “if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.”

  Fans struggle through the time between Smiley’s broadcasts, awaiting her next “foolishness” with great anticipation.

  THE VITALS

  Birthday: September 26, 1949

  Born and raised: Born in Los Angeles, California; raised in Webster Groves, Missouri

  Current home: Rural Northern California

  Love life: Lives with Jack Canning; they won’t say if they’re legally married

  Family life: Daughter Phoebe born 1978; daughter Lucy born 1982; son, Axel, born 1992

  Schooling: BA, Vassar; MFA and PhD, University of Iowa

  Teaching: Iowa State, undergrad and graduate creative writing workshops, 1981–96

  Day job?: No

  Honors and awards (partial listing): Pulitzer Prize, 1992; inducted into American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2001; PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature, 2006; chaired judging panel for Man Booker International Prize, 2009

  Notable notes:

  • In 1992 Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for her fifth novel, A Thousand Acres.

  • Smiley boards horses at a ranch near her home and rides nearly every day.

  • Smiley writes and blogs for a wide range of magazines including the New Yorker, Elle, Harper’s, Playboy, and Practical Horseman.

  THE COLLECTED WORKS

  Novels

  Barn Blind, 1980

  At Paradise Gate, 1981

  Duplicate Keys, 1984

  The Greenlanders, 1988

  A Thousand Acres, 1991

  Moo, 1995

  The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, 1998

  Horse Heaven, 2000

  Good Faith, 2003

  Ten Days in the Hills, 2007

  Private Life, 2010

  Young Adult Novels

  The Georges and the Jewels, 2009

  A Good Horse, 2010

  True Blue, 2011

  Nonfiction

  Catskill Crafts: Artisans of the Catskill Mountains, 1988

  Charles Dickens, 2003

  A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck, 2004

  Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, 2005

  The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer, 2010

  Fiction Collections

  The Age of Grief, novella and short stories, 1987

  Ordinary Love & Good Will, novellas, 1989

  Jane Smiley

  Why I write

  I write to investigate things I’m curious about.

  A novelist’s job is to integrate information with the feelings and the stories of her characters, because a novel is about the alternation of the inner world and the outer world, what happens and what the characters feel about it. There’s no reason to write a novel u
nless you’re going to talk about the inner lives of your characters. Without that, the material is dry. But without events and information, the novel seems subjective and pointless.

  You can see in the earliest novels, as they were forming themselves historically, that there was this impulse to find out stuff. Don Quixote thinks he’s setting out to save something, but what he’s really doing, as Cervantes follows him along, is finding out how the world works in comparison to how he thought it worked from reading his beloved romances. The whole point of Don Quixote is to show the conflict between what he thought was true and what he learns when he goes out there. It’s not only a seminal work, it’s the seminal motive for writing a novel.

  When I was researching the nonfiction book I wrote about the novel, I discovered the childhoods of most novelists were similar to mine. Almost all novelists grew up reading voraciously, and many of them come from families in which it’s automatic to tell stories about family characters, Aunt Ruth or whomever, and they are curious and/or observant. I was one of those kids who had to be told to stop asking questions all the time. That’s what novelists do. We gather information, and we form what we learn into a story.

  I loved to read, and I read lots of series books, such as Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey twins. I considered the novelists I read to be my friends. I wasn’t intimidated by them—they were doing me a favor, telling me these stories. When I got older, in high school, I discovered that the American writer-ideal was Hemingway for a boy or Fitzgerald for a girl. An aspiring author of serious literature could be a he-man writer like Hemingway or a she-man writer like Fitzgerald. There were no female-writer role models.

  Imagine a girl sitting at her desk in ninth grade, scratching her head, saying, I can’t write The Sun Also Rises; I’m a girl. My only alternative is The Great Gatsby. But look what happened to Fitzgerald: he published four books and died of alcoholism and his first book was the only good one. Who wants that?

  In college I found my other options: Virginia Woolf, Brontë, Austen. But they weren’t Americans. So I got used to looking to England for role models.