This post comes from author Jean Hanff Korelitz who has a new book out The White Rose. She’s a novelist who lives in Princeton, N.J., with her husband, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, and their children.
I interviewed Jean Hanff Korelitz who kindly took the time to reply thoroughly and quickly. Jean is always happy to phone into book groups reading the book.
How did you get started in writing? Authoring your first book?
I’ve wanted to be a writer since the age of 7 when my 2nd grade teacher
convinced me that I already was one. I wrote poetry through college, and
in fact, my first book was a collection of poems (The Properties of Breath, Bloodaxe Books, 1988), but my real wish was to write fiction. I wrote two novels in the 1980s and had the pleasure of watching them get rejected by every publisher on the planet.
I did have agents… three agents, to be exact, but having an agent is sadly no guarantee of getting your work published. When I wrote my third novel, A Jury of Her Peers, which was my first to be published, I changed agents once again and this time had greater success, but the book was a genre book — it was a thriller — and this meant abandoning my earlier idea of myself as a literary novelist.
It’s taken me two more novels to battle my way back from genre fiction. Typically, publishers like you to stay in one genre. Perhaps it’s lucky my thriller wasn’t more successful! If it had been, I’d probably have found it even more difficult to get my more recent books published.
Did you have an agent before publishing your first book? If so, how did you select the person and why did you decide to have one?
My first agent contacted me after reading my poems. My second was a highly respected literary agent I met while working briefly in publishing. My third agent was a young woman I also encountered through my publishing job.
Two of these agents I decided to leave, mainly out of frustration at their not being able to sell my work (though I have gone on to do projects with one of them, and frequently refer writers to her.). The other agent dropped me, rather unceremoniously, but also understandably: he was ill, and I’m sure it was all he could do to continue working with the successful authors on his list.
When I decided to write a genre novel, I contacted a woman who was highly successful with commercial fiction, and sent her a letter that described the thriller I was writing. She liked the book but made me revise heavily before sending it out. She also sold my next novel, The Sabbathday River, to a far more literary publisher. Several years ago, she decided to close her business, but very generously found me a wonderful new agent, who sold my most recent novel, The White Rose.
Your book The Sabbathday River was shown on Oprah. How did that happen?
A few years ago, my daughter and I appeared on Oprah for a program about creating close ties with your children. My involvement grew out of a short article I did for O Magazine about something I do on my daughter’s birthday every year. At the end of the program, she kindly mentioned my novel The Sabbathday River. I only wish the book had been one of her book club choices! But alas, it was not.
How was writing a book for kids different from writing an adult novel?
A few years ago, I decided to try writing a children’s novel, and the result was Interference Powder. It was not as easy as I’d hoped, but it was a briefer process— about a year as opposed to the three years it usually takes me to write an adult novel. It was difficult to find a publisher, and I finally sold it to a small children’s publisher, Marshall Cavendish.
The book has just come out in paperback, and I really enjoy visiting schools where it is being read. This is especially pleasant in Princeton, New Jersey, where the novel is set, since the kids love reading about landmarks they recognize.
Adult Contemporary Fiction is probably the hardest area for an author to enter. How did you break into it? With so many fiction stories, how do you weave a story that isn’t like the others?
I actually feel that the secret isn’t necessarily finding a new story to tell, but finding a new way to tell an old story. That’s one reason I’m so fascinated by the ways in which a template text or story can be transformed: Jane Smiley’s use of King Lear in A Thousand Acres, for example, or Charles Frazier’s use of The Odyssey in Cold Mountain are two examples that come to mind.
Perhaps I feel this way because I’m not particularly good at making up stories — never have been — but using a template has enabled me to write my most recent two novels, The Sabbathday River (which makes ample use of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter) and The White Rose (which is a resetting of the Strauss opera, Der Rosenkavalier). Not that Hawthorne or Strauss would be at all amused! (I think Strauss in particular would probably turn in his grave.)
What is your favorite quote?
You’re probably going to think I’m very uninspired in general, because I don’t have a writing or even a general motivational quote. I’ve never really read any “How to Write” books, or if I have, I’ve forgotten them. I do have one quote on my wall, near my desk, from the late writer Simon Wiesenthal from his book The Murderers Among Us:
“Slowly I learned that between white and black there were many shades of gray: steel-gray, pearl-gray, dove-gray. And there were many shades of white. The victims were not all innocent either… Every nation has its collaborators. We Jews had them too; we had perhaps fewer than other peoples, but we are not all angels.”
This is actually quite good writing advice in itself. After all, we may be interested in the ultimate struggle between good and evil, but when it comes to characters, purely good and purely evil is not terribly compelling. We need our villains to seem real to us, and our best heroes are always human and complex. And if we always insisted on Dudley Do-Right, we wouldn’t have Jack Bauer on 24, and life would be a whole lot less interesting.
How do fit in writing with all the other things you have to do?
I’ve been extremely fortunate because I’ve never had to work in my writing around a full-time job. Writing is my job, and while I could make a distinction between the magazine articles I write for a faster paycheck and the fiction which generates income only every five years or so, I’m certain I would have been far less productive if I’d had to hold down a full-time job these past twenty years or so. Hats off to anyone who can do it!
I usually write during the day when my kids are at school, but I’m often doing about five other things at the same time. On the plus side, I tend to run out of steam after four or five hours, even when the writing is going really well, so I probably couldn’t use any more time even if I had it.
To someone who is really trying to squeeze in time to write, I’d say two things. First, keep something to write on with you at all times — a laptop if you have one, or a pad if you don’t. Sitting in a doctor’s office, which would you rather do: read a four-year-old magazine or spend some quality time with your own imagination? Second, don’t beat yourself up about the time you don’t have.
There are plenty of writers who, for one reason or another, have plenty of time to write but don’t actually produce very much writing. You are not necessarily at a disadvantage for having less available time. Use the time you have and try to use it well.
What are your top five book recommendations and why?
Like almost every reader I know, I carry around a personal pantheon of books I adore. My list (be forewarned) is a little more eclectic than most:
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. The mother lode. Also: the greatest chick lit novel ever written. Every time you read it you find yourself wondering whether Elizabeth and Darcy will manage to get together.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev. One of the most powerful novels about being an artist I’ve ever read.
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping. A book so heartbreakingly beautiful I’ve never been able to reread it.
Fredrick Forsythe, The Odessa File. I warned you the list was eclectic. I absolutely love this novel, not only for the intense suspense and superb thriller structure but for — yes, actually! — the writing.
Nevil Shute, A Town Like Allice. I recently reread this wonderful book and it was even better than the first time. It’s noteworthy that this classic novel of Australian life does not even mention the word Australia for the first 70 pages. (Hadn’t he ever taken a writing course and learned how to do things properly? What was he thinking!) You can’t help but admire how the novel skips from genre to genre — who would publish it today? Publishers wouldn’t know what to do with it!
Advice for aspiring authors
Fortunately for us, writing is something you can succeed at later in life. Unlike figure skating or ballet, where you’re basically washed up by your mid-twenties, you can write a spectacular book in your dotage — look at Frank McCourt! — so the dream, and, more importantly, the potential, never fades. In fact, you could argue that we’re more capable of writing an interesting book with every year we stay alive.
My advice to aspiring writers is to read voraciously, try to think critically about what you love in the books you love, and what you don’t love in the books you hurl against the wall. When you’re ready, write the book you most want to read, because it’s highly likely that the rest of us want to read it, too.
Thank you, Jean!