Author Spotlight:
Jenny Gardiner

        

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Questions We Asked Jenny...


What is your favorite place to write? Nothing better than reclining with my laptop to write on our front porch swing on a crisp autumn day (or any day above 65 degrees!), or in front of the fireplace when it's blustery outside.

Are you a typewriter, Mac, or PC person? Always been an Apple girl. Definitely write on my Mac.

How many full-length novel manuscripts did you complete before selling? Sleeping with Ward Cleaver is the first one I tried to sell but I have about six other manuscripts that I have written as well, mostly written before starting to attempt to sell this one.

Can you give us a quote from one of your best (or worst) rejection letters? Drats! I just cleaned out my massive pile of returned manuscripts (breaks my heart, all those trees died for nothing!) and saved the best rejection letters, but I'm out of town right now so can't dig them up. I did love the one ultra-enthusiastic request for a partial (what, a whopping 30 pages) and the eventual rejection after a year of my trying to follow up on it with this agent, with her explaining that she was a very busy woman. Uh, aren't we all? But I mean come on, you could read 30 pages in the bathroom! Or read 3 pages and realize you didn't want to sign it and then reject it. I think she just never got around to reading it for over a year. That's quite a slush pile for a meager partial!

What would you say is the most valuable writers' training course you've taken? I haven't done much in the way of courses, though as a long-time freelance writer I'd say the school of hard knocks has been the best education. My journalistic training in college certainly trained me to write tightly (ha! I should write tighter but I'm terrible at cutting out my words--but I'm getting better at it!). But the most interesting and I think useful seminar at a conference was at last summer's Backspace conference; agents Jeff Kleinman and Kristin Nelson did a simulated publisher's editorial board meeting thing--where the participants in the seminar role-played various editors at a meeting deciding whether to accept or reject a manuscript that one of the editors brings to the table. Very enlightening to understand what it is that they're looking for, rather than seeing it from the writer's viewpoint, which is what we usually do.

The other exercise that I have found extremely useful is to sit in on those 2 pages - 2 minute panels at writing conferences, where editors and agents read aloud the first 2 pages of various submissions and explain what it is about each that they liked and didn't like and why they'd reject it (or every blue moon, ask for a full). One thing that was eye-opening to me was how so many submissions start to sound familiar or ho-hum. You can really appreciate how agents and editors get a lot of the "same" thing all the time.

What is your reason for writing? Because I suck at math. No, really, I have always been a writer; it's what I do. My husband used to joke that some day I would write a bestseller and earn the money in the family (something I STILL laugh at because we all know how profitable fiction-writing is for 99.9% of writers) and I just never imagined having that fiction bug because of my journalism background--I was used to sticking to the facts only. But I guess I had to mature enough and reach a point in my life when I was ready to write fiction, because once I did start making up stories, no longer having to worry about facts and accuracy, I found out that I loved it and it was so much fun.

What would the hero of your latest book say if he met you on the street? This is a good one. Jack Doolittle is my protagonist's husband in Sleeping with Ward Cleaver. Early in the book he's not at all what you'd call "hero" material--he is a stuffshirt pain in the butt who is just totally focused on the mundane--much to his wife Claire's dismay. So the Jack from early in the book would probably tell me to pick up the house LOL. Later in the book he'd probably tell me "way to go, girl!"

What would he DO? Probably give me a high five while he was saying that!

What advice would you give to other aspiring writers? I feel redundant saying this as much as I do but I firmly believe that you have to have such faith in yourself as a writer so that you can weather the rejections. Understand that this is first and foremost a business and the rejections aren't personal, even though they feel extremely personal. I mean, it's as if you've been through the gestation period of an elephant, you finally birth that thing, and then everyone tells you what an ugly baby you have.

A writer friend of mine who helped me weather my rejection storms kept reminding me all the time: Last writer standing wins the publishing contract! And I think it's great advice. You will never get published if you quit. The other thing I think is so important is to know the business and take the time to educate yourself about it. Lastly, just keep reading and writing, because both of these processes will help you to fine-tune who you are as a writer, what your voice is; you'll learn what you like and don't like in others' writing, and you can only improve.


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Still have questions?

If you want to know more about Jenny, visit her website at
www.JennyGardiner.net, or check out www.TheDebutanteBall.com.

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