Why We Write (23 page)

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 publicize 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.

S
ince 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.