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PROFILE An Interview with Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult’s books explore all the intricate, complicated layers of parenthood with beautifully gripping prose and breathtaking twists and turns. Her latest novel, The Tenth Circle, features a comic book artist married to a Dante scholar in a fast-paced tale that explores the connection between a father facing an internal inferno and the daughter he must rescue from her own private hell. Her upcoming book, Nineteen Minutes, takes on the wrenching subject of school violence. The best-selling author of 13 novels, Picoult was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction in 2003. She studied creative writing at Princeton and had two short stories published by Seventeen magazine while still a student, then went on to earn a master’s in education from Harvard. She married Tim Van Leer, whom she had known at Princeton, and it was while pregnant with her first child that she wrote her first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale. Picoult’s work has won her fans around the world. She just completed a South African book tour. MWLM: Do you have a favorite among the books you’ve written? If so, why is it your favorite? Is there a book you’d go back and change, if you could? JP: I like Second Glance and The Tenth Circle because they really break the boundaries of normal fiction. It’s exciting to feel like you’ve written something that’s never been done before. As for books I’d go back and change – well, I haven’t encountered that yet! When I release a book for publication, it’s in the best shape I can get it into. Normally, when I go back and re-read a book, I’m pleasantly surprised! MWLM: Tell me about your upcoming book, Nineteen Minutes. How were you affected by your research for this book, which deals with a school shooting and its aftermath? How personal did this book become for you as the mother of three? Did it change your opinion on the causes of or cures for school violence? MWLM: Where you do you get the ideas for your novels? What inspires your writing? Do the plots of your books change as you start writing them? Have the plots of any of your books changed completely from what you first envisioned? JP: Ideas come from all over, but are basically “what if” questions that I can’t answer. They may come from a problem one of my children has at school, a fight with my husband, a news article I read. If I am still thinking about the question weeks later, it’s a good idea for a book. Before I write a book, I do up to six months of research. So by the time I physically begin to write, the books rarely change. I know the beginning and the ending. The middle is up to where the characters take me. The plot that probably changed the most for me was The Pact. At first, I had the girl (Emily) as the survivor of a suicide pact. But when I did research with the police, they pointed out that a male survivor who was bigger and stronger would be booked on murder charges until he could be cleared. So I altered the story to have Chris survive instead. MWLM: How has motherhood affected your writing? And how has writing influenced the kind of mother you are? JP: I’m the kind of mom who needs to have my own special SOMETHING going on, so that when I do sit down with the kids, it’s THEIR time, not mine. To that end, writing makes me more focused when I’m with them. And writing the kinds of stories I do has brought some great dinner table discussions for us – it encourages honesty and a connection to their lives that many moms don’t have with their kids. MWLM: How do you balance such a prolific writing career with motherhood? JP: It’s easier now that my kids are in school all day. But at first, I’d write any time they were watching Barney, at preschool, napping. Any fifteen minutes I could find, I’d write. I also have a VERY supportive husband! MWLM: Do you find that readers in other parts of the world (particularly mothers) have different reactions to your books than American readers? If so, why? Have any fan reactions really surprised you? JP: I was very surprised when I toured internationally and people had just read Perfect Match – in it, a mom who finds out her son is being sexually abused (she thinks it’s the neighborhood priest) shoots the guy at his arraignment, only to find out it wasn’t him. Most American moms understood that tiger-mama instinct. Overseas, however, people saw it as yet another American with a pistol. In Australia, I was even asked if I tour with my own gun! There was an assumption that in America, we’re always toting weapons and are very violent. MWLM: How do your children feel about your writing and your status as an award-winning writer? Or are you just “Mom” to them? JP: Last year, my son was reading one of my books when an older, pretty high school girl came up to him in the cafeteria. “Jodi Picoult’s my favorite author!” she said. “How did you hear about her?” Jake, being 12 and suave, just sort of grinned and said, “That’s my MOM.” I don’t know if it was pride, or the fact that he could improve his dating habits with my name, but these days, as more people recognize who I am, the kids sort of take it in stride. And yet, believe me, what they hear most from me is, “CLEAN UP YOUR ROOM.” MWLM: Do you ever go through periods where you simply cannot write? JP: Because I didn’t have a lot of time to write at first, I learned that when you sit down to do it, you DO IT. Writer’s block is for people who have time on their hands. Even now, when I sit down to write, I just get going. There are days I write utter garbage, but you can always edit garbage. You can’t edit a blank page.
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