This quarter’s profile features author Joshilyn Jackson, whose debut novel gods in Alabama (Time Warner) has garnered critical acclaim from the likes of Bookpage and author, Haywood Smith, and is also a SEBA and BAM Bestseller.

I had the pleasure of “meeting” Joshilyn through an online writing group that we both belong to, and it has been wonderful to watch her attain success over the past year with her novel. One of the things that has stuck out the most to me is that despite being busy touring and promoting her own book, she still finds time to offer advice to new writers, as opposed to "forgetting the little people."

Her sense of humor is remarkable, but what stands out even more is her insight into writing and the writing process. New and veteran writers alike can learn from Joshilyn’s advice as she answers our profile questions for the month.

MWLM: How do you juggle being a mom and a published author?

JJ: I married the right man. And apparently, my unborn soul sat down with God and put in quite a bit of research to select the exact right parents, too.

My husband has always taken my writing as seriously as he takes his own career, and has worked hard to make sure I had time to pursue it, even when it was costing more to write than the money I earned selling short fiction and plays and whatnot. And my parents have moved into my house more than once to be there for the kids so I could tour. I juggle, yes, but I have six extra adult hands helping me.

MWLM: Do you write based on a schedule?

JJ: I have a toddler. I don't do anything on a schedule. *grin*

I do have two or three mornings a week when my daughter goes to a mother's morning out at my church, and that's when I work. When I am under the gun, my husband will take the kids to my folks' house or his mother's place for a weekend to give me uninterrupted working days. I know some writers swear by "write every day," but realistically, my life doesn't allow for that. I break a lot of the most basic "rules" actually. I write organically, with no outline, I do not write every day, I don't write at the same time of day, now that I have a laptop I do not write always in a specific location. But I have a definite process and it works for me, and I know other writers now who work the way I work.

I get impatient with "How to write a book" books because they don't actually tell you how to write a book. They tell you one specific writer’s process. Of course, if it's Bird By Bird, who cares.  It’s such a fantastic memoir as well as having handy advice I did really need to hear, like, I love the permission to write terrible first drafts. I write horrid, embarrassing, dreadful first drafts. Then I spend 80% of the time I work on a book in rewrites. The actual book, for me, grows out of the rewriting process, so maybe writing that first horrific draft is my version of an outline. I don't know. I just know that if I follow the process I have worked out over the course of writing four books, at the end of eighteen months, I'll have a novel.

I think every writer has to find their own path to this.

MWLM: Do you ever get writer’s block? And if so how do you overcome it?

JJ: No. I am not sure I believe in it. Or at least, I am not sure I am capable of getting it. My writing time is so precious that I look forward to it, snatch it up, and gobble my way through it. Of course, sometimes what I write is awful and unusable and gets pitched away the next time I sit down to work and read back over it, but that's par for the course. I throw away 100 thousand words at least for every 80 - 90 thousand word novel I write.

I'm a very pragmatic person, I think, so I don't think of writing in terms of "having a muse" or "being blocked" or any sort of mystical “magicness.” It's just what I do, and I think of it in terms of pleasure. Writing novels, long before I ever sold them, was one of the greatest sources of pleasure and fulfillment in my life, therefore I continue to write novels. It's satisfying. There's this place in your brain you can get to when you are writing—for me it almost always happens in revisions, not drafting—some weird zone, where your focus narrows, your blood zings along, you can't hear the phone ringing, and if the house caught fire you might not notice because you are too busy cackling at your own jokes or weeping over images that you've managed to get out of your brain onto paper. You see it so clearly in your head and you move these people you made up around, and they are people you love, and it's so satisfying. Like scratching an itch that's so far under the skin your hands could never reach it, but this, the work, it reaches it.

If it stopped being a pleasure, I would probably quit. And maybe that would be my version of a block.

MWLM: What was the most unexpected part of publishing your first book?

JJ: I didn’t realize what talking to readers would be like; I've come to believe a novel is a conversation between the reader and the novel, and the reader brings so much to the book, I am not sure any person ever reads the exact same book as another person. And I don't think anyone has ever read the exact book I wrote, not down to the last molecule. Going on tour, and after, visiting book clubs, was like being let in on conversations between various individual readers and my novel. It was an amazing experience. Some people found things in the novel I had no idea were there. Some projected things I still don't think are there. And some would completely discount or miss little things that were hugely important to me, and instead focus on issues I had barely noticed.

Meeting and talking to all these people made me realize how far removed I am from the actual conversation between my book and the individual reading it. It's not something I can control. I can just write the best book I can write, and then it's not my conversation anymore. I was surprised by how much I had to let go of the book. I don't own it anymore in a lot of ways. But that's a good thing. I can concentrate on owning the book I am writing now.

MWLM: What one piece of advice you would give to a mom writer?

JJ: Write for yourself first. Write to entertain yourself, for pleasure, to say in story and images the things that matter most to you, and because it fills you up. And then bluntly and absolutely separate that from the business side of writing. They aren't the same thing. If you can't separate them, you are going to get your heart broken. It's the nature of this business to be heartbreaking, and no matter how good you are, you still have to be standing in the exact right place at the exact right time, and before that happens, you will likely get a rejection letter or two...or two thousand. So decide before you begin that the grindy parts won't be allowed to color your relationship with writing. Protect that relationship, because it is the very best part, and the only part that is actually yours.

Joshilyn’s first novel gods in Alabama is available in most major book retailers, as well as online at her site at www.JoshilynJackson.com. Be prepared – once you begin reading you won’t be able to put it down. In it, you can follow Arlene Fleet as she does something she promised herself she would never do again – return home to Possett, Alabama. Read about a wonderfully depicted southern heroine in a story about love, lies, murder, and redemption.

Her next novel, Between, Georgia, is due out in 2006.