The Next Best Book Club discussion

Jen,

What's the best and worst thing about being a writer?

Hi Peg,

I do tend to try and do a lot of research for authenticity--the title story, "From Here," emerged from a stack of notes I'd taken years before when I was staying a ramshackle hostel in central New Mexico.

I worry a lot about authenticity, especially for characters. I want them to have dimensions and imperfections and just not to be accessories to a story. But I think emotions are pretty universal, though, whether you're a teenager whose family comes from Russia or the DC suburbs--the same longing, isolation, insecurity, so in some ways, that's the easy part.

Dreams are SO important to my writing. I love the emotional charge you get from a dream, and the separateness of it, sometimes, from yourself, the way you can dream about being a 100-year-old man in China who just lost his wife and you wake up feeling as distraught as if it were your own wife. I always want to capture those charges of emotion, whether happy or sad, in my own work.

Sometimes dreams just come to me fully formed, as stories, and I feel just like a stenographer when I wake up. I dreamed almost the entirety of "Dog Days" while I was taking a nap one day, and "May-September," one of two novellas that comprises the collection "Could You Be With Her Now," came to me fully via a long dream at night. I think there are less filters when you dream, and perhaps you able to see the beauty and, again, charge in stories that you might not see the potential for when you are awake and thinking through story ideas.

I know we still have a few more hours to go but I wanted to take a moment to thank Jen for making herself available this week and taking on all of our questions.

Jen, you were a great guest and we were thrilled to have you! I hope you enjoyed hanging with us.

And thank you to everyone who participated! There's nothing better for me than to see readers connecting with the authors they are reading :)

Thanks so much for having me, Lori! I really enjoyed this. I'm here today if you have any last-minute questions.

Jen - thank you again for being willing to give us insight into your thoughts and processes. I have another question, if you're willing to answer it. Since many of these stories include substance abuse, I'm wondering if you've ever been approached by readers who maybe see themselves in your characters, and are reaching out for help. Do you feel any kind of social responsibility to help readers that may need it?

Hi Leslie,

Thanks so much for the interesting question! I've never had anyone approach me about substance abuse. As a write who is gay, sometimes people will contact me regarding gay characters, but sometimes people will contact me about nongay characters, or situations.

I don't feel particularly preachy as a writer, but I feel our responsibility is more to present experiences and situations, and if they evolve into a springboard for a greater discussion, then I'm thrilled. I guess I don't like to take sides because, although as a child of an alcoholic, I may be more inclined to have an opinion on substance abuse or what Kennedy went through in "Killing Rabbits," a novel of mine that's coming out August 2016 deals partially with incest, something I've never experienced but the character in the story did, so I wrote about it. I often worry about taking on taboo topics (other authors (Arundhati Roy, Donna Tartt, Ian McEwan, to name a few have also explored incest), but I seem to do it a lot, and I wonder if disenfranchised characters tend to view me as an outlet to for their "story."

I know I talk about my characters as separate, "sentient" beings and not different shades of myself, but that's what they feel like--real people that I try to understand through my own lens. I just want to be the vessel that tells their story with as much grace and honesty and power as possible.

Why not write about real people, then, you ask? ;) I don't know--no real person has come to me and asked me to write their story, I guess.

Thanks, Jen. I think it's a huge credit to you as a writer that your characters indeed feel "honest" and "true" when they are, in fact, only fictional characters. :)

Thank you, Leslie!

And Lori, in response to your question, I think this is the best thing about being a writer--sharing your ideas/work with the work and talking about it. Writing isn't a closed loop. It's not an author "speaking" to a reader and lording her authority--it's an open dialogue with the reader. Writing creates a response in the reader, which is then shared.

The bad things? All the usual--rejection, rejection, rejection!

I can't even imagine being a writer. I would love to be able to write a story like "The Paleolithic Age". The story really struck me and has stuck in my mind. I think often about the tiny things we do or don't do, without even thinking, that can completely change lives. It's a bit scary, as this story shows. It's a bit of a paralyzing thought.