Best-Selling Author - Jacquelyn Mitchard ~ Interviewed

Jacquelyn Mitchard’s first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was named by USA Today as one of the ten most influential books of the past 25 years – second only to the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (but second by a long shot, it must be said.)

The Deep End of the Ocean was chosen as the first novel in the book club made famous by the TV host Oprah Winfrey, and transformed into a feature film produced by and starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

All of Mitchard’s novels have been greater or lesser bestsellers – and include The Most Wanted, A Theory of Relativity, Twelve Times Blessed, The Breakdown Lane and Cage of Stars. Critics have praised them for their authentic humanity and skilful command of story. Readers identify because they see reflected, in her characters – however extreme their circumstances – emotions they already understand.

Mitchard’s first story of adventure and her eighth novel of realistic contemporary fiction is Still Summer (August, 2007). In the same month, the paperback version of her most critically acclaimed novel, Cage of Stars (August 2007), appears from Warner Books.

Mitchard also has embarked on four novels for young adults.

What is your current project? Tell us about it.

I just finished my ninth adult novel. It’s called ‘Fly Away Home’ and is about two couples pursuing parenthood through surrogacy, whose lives become entangled in a harrowing way…I’ve also completed the second in a trilogy of young adult novels called the ‘Midnight Twins,’ about twin sisters born one minute before and one minute after midnight, who are clairvoyant; one can see only the past, one the future. My next project will be a romantic comedy and after that, a continuation of the story of ‘The Deep End of the Ocean.’

Tell us about your journey to publication. How long had you been writing before you got the call you had a contract, how you heard and what went through your head.

I had been writing for about six months – fiction, that is, although I’d been a reporter for more fifteen years, since I was 19 years old. I began writing fiction because of the old aphorism that art heals. My husband died from cancer when I was in my 30s. I was nearly 40 when ‘The Deep End of the Ocean’ was published, 11 years ago. I tried my hand at a novel because it was impossible for me to do: I had no training. I had no experience. I’d never had so much as a short story published.

My sole experience with “creative writing” was the freshman elective at the University of Illinois. And yet I knew what stores were. And I needed something impossible to face the day without my husband, with no life insurance, with three young sons bewildered and made with grief. I wanted to teach them that no matter what size the spike life drove through you, it didn’t give you permission to downsize your dreams, to be fearful and timid.

How could I show them this except by doing it myself? I took the direct opposite advice of everyone who loved me: Be conservative, they said. Guard what you have and don’t take any risks. I took all the risks. I wrote a novel instead of “getting a real job.” I adopted a baby daughter with the last money I had in savings – an act so rash some people refused to speak to me.

I believed utterly in what I was doing, not because I was convinced of my genius (good grief!) but because no one else believed in what I was doing! I had written a terribly forgettable non-fiction book in my early 20s and remained friends with my agent, who was at that time just starting out. I sent my first hundred pages to her. By this time, I had $186 in my checking account.

It was on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving – today, the day I’m writing this. By Monday, I had a two-book contract for $500,000. My first thought was, I am no longer lost. I have done what my husband said I could do when he was on his deathbed. I’ve saved our lives – for now at least.

Do you still experience self-doubts regarding your work, or struggle in a particular area such as writers block or angst driven head-banging against walls? Please share some helpful overcoming hints that you've discovered.

Doubt is my middle name. I wrestle with the validity and viability of my ideas and my prose every single day of every single week. My struggle is to make the tune in my head come out in the prose and it’s hard; it’s so hard it’s almost not to be done and I have to keep going back at it.

My worst fear is the idea and if the idea had a square bottom.. if it’s literally seaworthy for the voyage. I can write dialogue. I can structure a novel and pace it. It’s the concept that is daunting – the beginning, middle and end. Is it fresh and fair? Has everyone in the whole western hemisphere and most of the southern already written this very story and done a better job of it?

This is what I do: I tell my friends. I tell my assistant, Pamela, my colleagues, such as the wonderful Canadian writer Holly Kennedy. I tell it over and over and watch the reactions. If they are tepid, I know I am on a track headed for an open bridge and I don’t go there. If people ask, what next? If people say that they can’t wait to read this… I’m okay. It’s a performing art, you know. It’s not worth a bean if no one but you cares for it.

What mistakes have you made while seeking publication? Or to narrow it down further what's something you wish you'd known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?

My biggest mistake was switching publishers from my first to my next publisher. I know that all writers do it now. It’s not really possible to be like Ernie Banks and play for one team for your whole career. But I wanted to. I thought that I needed to leave because there’d been a bloodbath and it seemed all the people they’d brought in were quite mad. I didn’t realize that this would happen over and over and that all of them were mad – excepting my agent and one editor.

What's the best or worst advice (or both) you've heard on writing/publication?

Don’t tell everything that you know.

What is your favorite source for finding story ideas?

Eavesdropping and reading the newspaper. Listening closely to conversations and the stories others tell. ‘Anna Karenina’ was inspired by a newspaper story; so was ‘In Cold Blood.’ I’m an inveterate dentists’ office ripper. I come home with my tee-shirt stuffed with ripped-out pages. My own life has been a bit of a reverse inspiration. Things I write tend to happen in the world simply, I suppose, because, as Gavin de Becker wrote, if you can think of it, it has already happened. It’s a matter of living long enough to bear witness.

Have you ever had one of those awkward writer moments you'd like to share with us, the ones wherein you get "the look" from the normals? Example, you stand at a knife display at the sporting goods store and ask the clerk which would be the best to use to disembowel a six foot man…please do tell.

I’ve gone around asking how it would be possible for a corpse dog to be unable to scent a decomposing body so much – because it’s a difficult question – that one or two friends have asked me why my interest is so keen. And I’ve had the devastating experience of close friends, people who are truly important in my life, believing that I “used” stories about them or their relatives in books, stories such as an anecdote about a woman who chose to do good works rather than marry a rich man as all her sorority sisters did.

And while this could refer to any number of thousands of people, and I don’t cannibalize anyone’s life without permission, I have lost friendships for this reason: People simply will not believe that I wouldn’t do this. Others believe their lives are so fascinating that, before they tell me that they’re having a deviated septum repaired, they caution me not to write about it.

Is there a particularly difficult set back that you've gone through in your writing career you are willing to share? Or have you ever been at the point where considered quitting writing altogether?

I’ve been that way this past year. It’s just been a rotten year. I got spectacular, amazing reviews on a book that my publisher simply failed to follow through on promoting. And this was after multitudinous and repeated assurances that they would move heaven and earth if it “made the list” to get it to move up (promotion is a key matter there). They didn’t.

But beyond this, it was simply an awful, awful year. I have only a few dear and close friends. One suffered a respiratory event and now is in a persistent vegetative state; I’ll never be able to speak to her again. My youngest child, just two, was in hospital, believed to have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And I learned that four close friends had cancer; another’s sister took her life.

The year was filled with conflict with me and my older children, for various reasons. And I just wanted to give up and give in, especially after I badly ripped out my knee and could no longer have the outlet of being active. That’s when the training takes over – you’re like a police officer – and you go on auto pilot until you see the sun come up.

And there is the fact that at the end of the day, aside from waitressing, there isn’t anything else I can do!

What are a few of your favorite books? (Not written by you.)

My favorite book of all time is ‘A Tree Grows in Brookylyn’ by Betty Smith. The sheer honest simplicity, the portrayal of immigrant poverty and the story of the young girls undaunted spirit… I can’t explain it.

Another, perhaps for some of the same reasons, along with the writing, is ‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis. ‘Unless’ by Carol Shields. ‘The Moons of Jupiter’ by Alice Munroe.’Gifts From the Sea,’ by Ann Morrow Lindbergh, ‘A Dark-Adapted Eye’ by Barabara Vine. ‘The Chatham School Affair’ by Thomas H. Cook. ‘Ahab’s Wife’ by Sena Jeter Naslund. ‘Another Country’ by James Baldwin, ‘Butterfield 8’ by John O’Hara, ‘Crossing to Safety’ by Wallace Stegner, ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte, ‘The First Poems’ by WS Merwin, ‘Music For Chameleons,’ by Truman Capote, ‘In This House of Brede’ by Rumer Godden, ‘Birds of American’ by Lorrie Moore, ‘The Gift of Fear’ by Gavin de Becker, ‘Lindbergh’ by Scott Berg, ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’ by Willa Cather,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee, ‘The Killer Angels,’ by Michael Shaara…. See now what you’ve started….

What piece of writing have you done that you're particularly proud of and why?

I simply love an essay I wrote in the anthology CHOICE, which is not, as you would think, only about abortion, called ‘The Ballad of Bobbie Jo.’

Dean Koontz recently shared his take on the concept on "the writer's sacred duty." What comes to your mind at the mention of "the writer's sacred duty?"

It is, first, to bear witness, and next to uplift through vision, mercy and grace.

Do you have a pet peeve having to do with this biz?

I don’t like it when writers don’t write their own books. I know it’s considered a sort of salon for some of the big mysterians – a training ground for younger authors. But it doesn’t seem fair to be able to say, Go write a novel about a guy who finds out there’s something he can inhale that will allow him to see ghosts. That’s actually an idea I had. It would be sort of like being Santa and having elves.

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

I would love, truly love, to write a great ghost story, the equivalent of Susan Hill’s ‘The Woman in Black.’

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

My favorite part is revision. You’re almost there, and basically tailoring a good suit. I love the chance do the seams and make the tucks that will just really bring the whole ‘outfit’ together.

What aspect of writing was the most difficult for you to grasp/conquer? How did you overcome it?

The most difficult part for me was the impulse to ‘kitchen-sink’ a book – to put in everything I’d learned and everything I knew about a subject. Choosing what should go in because it is worth it to the reader – that is, worth it to the plot – instead of because “it happened” or I like it was and is a difficult task. I learned to think of it as pruning a tree or a rosebush. If you do it at the outset, you can count on a healthier plant that will bloom heartier and last longer.

What is the first thing you do when you begin a new book?

I think of a title. That makes it an entity. Then I start months of research. Until I can answer ANY question about a book – answer why any given character would do any thing, why this plot choice is earned, I’m not ready to write.

Writing rituals. Do you have to sit somewhere specific, complete a certain number of words, leave something undone to trigger creativity for the next session? Some other quirk you'd like to share?

Absolutely a nutter about it. I must have a title for anything I begin, and not a “working” title. I’ve titles of books, including ‘The Sadness of Great Cities,’ that don’t even have books to go with them. I used to smoke cigarettes long ago, but now have to have tea or water at the ready, and my Rodale Synonym Finder as well as my lucky thesaurus – a $3 paperback that has been re-bound three times. I always leave something undone to trigger the next scene or section and sleep on it.

I find sleep to be very much an agent in sorting out the inside of my mind for the outside. I write in my bed, on a lap desk because I had the habit of getting up and wandering around too much when I had an office. And I need to work on projects in sequence, not a little of this and a little of that – although I will always drop everything for a piece of quick journalism. I love doing it; and it’s fun to keep my hand in after 25 years.

Plot, seat of pants or combination?

PLOT! I believe the plot is the regent and the characters reveal themselves through the incidents in the plot, rather than the other way ‘round. In general, I know almost everything that will happen in a novel before I begin to write and have either told it to someone in detail or sketched it out in a blank book, I have folders for each character, although not an extensive bio, and the interview notes for each bit of research – such as the parts about sailing in ‘Still Summer.’

What is the most difficult part of pulling together a book? Ex. Do you have saggy middles, soggy characters, soupy plots during your first drafts…if so, how do you shape it up?

The most difficult part is seeding in just enough character without larding it with back story. I want people to know the characters going in, particularly if there will be a great deal of action and not much pause for introspection but I don’t want to do the 19th century thing that involves describing the macro environment, the structure of the town, the nature of the people and finally narrows to the woman with the letter ‘A’ stitched onto her chest.

Have you received a particularly memorable reader response? Please share. Have you had a particularly memorable peer honor? Please share.
I’ve been shortlisted for prizes – The Orange Prize and others. But my most beautiful peer accolade came from Luanne Rice, who called my books ‘big and mysterious as the night sky’ and said that when she read them, she knew ‘more about herself.’ As for readers, there have been heartbreaking moments, when I have encountered readers whose own struggles with grief were assuaged by the travails of Beth of Vincent, Gabe or Julieanne, Gordon or Lorraine.

The comically touching ones are these: I know of three babies named after the main character in ‘Twelve Times Blessed,; True Dickinson, two named Arlington, after the main character in ‘The Most Wanted’ and two named Keefer after the little girl in ‘A Theory of Relativity.’

I love hearing readers say, “I’ve read them all” instead of “I read your book.”

Of all the kudos, awards, number of books sold or list-topping status you've attained what is the most personally meaningful nod or honor you've received?

It was having USA Today name ‘The Deep End of the Ocean’ the most influential book of the past 25 years… second only to Harry Potter. I would have to say that’s like the Cubs being second to the BoSox, but there you have it.

Do you follow the careers of other Oprah honorees? Do you read her suggested books?

I’ve read a great many, and of course, some were friends before – among them Jane Hamilton and Elizabeth Berg. Favorites besides theirs were ‘Drowning Ruth’ by Christina Schwartz and ‘House of Sand and Fog’ by Andre Dubus III, as well as ‘Fall On Your Knees; by Anne-Marie MacDonald and ‘Vinegar Hill’ by A. Manette Ansay. I think it would be very interesting to count just how many books in Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club had water --- the traditional sign for change, rebirth – in their title, including ‘The Deep End of the Ocean,’ ‘River, Cross My Heart,’ ‘Icy Sparks,,’ ‘Stones From the River,’ ‘Cane River’ and ‘Gap Creek.’

What is it like to watch a movie based on a book you've birthed? Surreal? Like you've come home? Disappointing? Explain please.

Swell. Just a real kick in the head.

How much marketing/publicity do you do? Any advice in this area?

I do a great deal and as time goes by a budgets for publicity become tighter, and media opportunities fewer, the social and internet marketing become very important. Nothing takes the place of visits with readers, of course. But I find myself more and more satisfied with opportunities to speak to large groups about writing and about books – groups that serve another purpose that focusing on me, such as fundraisers for cancer or MS research.

I also love to teach when I can do that. Another really useful tool has been the one-minute ‘media presenters’ I make with my webmaster for each book. We sent them out to fans on the list and they let everyone know a new book is in the offing.

Parting words? Anything you wish we would've asked because you've got the perfect answer?

If you’re planning to write a book, don’t worry about whether you’ll need an agent or not, if you should leave the door open to a possible series or try to create a character that will appeal to a scriptwriter. Just tell the best story you can.