After giving
4.5 of 5 stars to
I Couldn't Love You More yesterday, I am pleased to welcome Jillian Medoff, today. Jillian was good enough to share some insight into the story behind the story, advice for writers and reading suggestions for those of you looking for new reads.
Change the Word: How did you come up with the idea for
I Couldn't Love You More?
Jillian Medoff: I received an MFA at NYU. While
I was there, I took a master class with the very brilliant writer, Grace Paley
who said, “Write what you don’t know about what you know.” It didn’t occur to me
until a few years ago that this is exactly what I do. I’ll take moments from my
own life, from my family’s life, from strangers’ lives and I’ll look at what
would normally happen—what I know—and then I’ll consider everything I don’t
know, the big “what if’s.”
I actually wrote an essay about
the evolution of
I Couldn’t Love You
More, and about my writing career called “This is a True Story.” It’s
available in both the print and eBook versions of the novel. One point I make
in this essay is that
I Couldn’t Love You More, like my other novels,
Hunger Pointand
Good Girls Gone Bad, evolved
very much the way Grace Paley suggested. For instance, when I started to write
I Couldn’t Love You More, here’s what I
knew: I’m a mother and stepmother. I have three children. I love them each
equally but all differently. I’ve always been a writer who tackles complex
themes and risky subjects—I write about the things that people think but never
say aloud. If a book has a predictable storyline or familiar situations, there’s
little satisfaction for me in writing it. A woman deciding which man she’ll
spend her life with? I’ve read that story a million times, but a stepmother
deciding which of her children she’ll save in a freak accident? Now
that’s a challenge. I had no idea how I
would react if forced to choose between my daughters, and figuring that out
became my obsession for the next decade. In fact, even though the novel is
finished and published, I still grapple with the question. I mean, how can any
of us know what we would do in that situation?
CTW: What kind of prep work did you do before
writing? Are you more plotter or pantser?
JM: Definitely a pantser—no
question. I never do any prep work. I just start writing and see where the
story takes me. I write the way I read, which is to have everything unfold as I
go. At certain points, I have to do research and take stock of where I
am—that’s when I might think more strategically about where I want the story to
go and what I may have to do to get there, but ultimately, I like to work
without a net—I’m way up there on the high wire, literally, making it up as I
go along.
CTW:What was the biggest challenge you faced while writing the novel?
How did you overcome it?
JM: There are challenges with every book—technical, artistic,
personal—but honestly, my primary challenge with
I Couldn’t Love You More was finding dedicated time to write. I’m very busy,
and every single moment of my day is filled with activity. I’ve been in
corporate communications since college, and now I work four days a week. It’s
an anonymous, nine-to-five job—a career, actually—at a very conservative, very
buttoned-up firm, but it gives my life a structure, which is important. The
downside is that I have multiple commitments, which are compounded by my
family—three daughters, two sisters, parents, husband—and a deep-rooted love of
reading and watching TV. I’ve set up my life so that I can find time to write,
but it is always a race-to-the-finish to get everything done.
CTW: The story deals with some
tough themes. How did you personally deal with writing some of the darker, more
serious sides of the story?
JM: This is an excellent question. My natural
inclination is to balance dark material by using humor. I really didn’t start
out trying to be a funny writer. In fact, I’d rather not. Over the years, I have tried very hard to write
in a dark, brooding, noir-like voice, but every time I do it seems and false
and unnatural and simply not me. I have a predisposition to finding the absurd
in the everyday, that is, looking at ordinary random moments and seeing what’s
funny about them. We are each absurd in our own way, and to accept that—to
celebrate it—is critical to our survival. Think about it: we live and then we
die. How dark is that? Therefore, we absolutely must find humor—otherwise life
would be too depressing. Of course, my philosophy doesn’t lend itself to all
literary subjects. You won’t find me writing about, say, the Holocaust or
missing and murdered children. But family relations, sibling rivalry, true
love, the devaluation of the American dollar—all of these are perfect
opportunities for humor, even in their darkest moments.
CTW: What is the best lesson you have learned as a writer?
JM: To never become too impressed with myself, to
learn that there will always be someone more talented, funnier, smarter, and
better-connected who will take home the big advance and the Pulitzer. To be a
great writer, to truly reach beyond your grasp, it’s important to be humble as well as realistic. If I were too
impressed with myself, my work would suffer. By being honest with myself, I can
be honest on the page. A good writer, an honest writer, gets as close to the
bone as possible. You have to be willing to take risks, which means writing as
intimately and genuinely and deeply as you can, and if you’re caught up in an
illusion of yourself or the world—or you care too much what other people
think—your work will be as false as you are.
CTW:What books would we find on your bookshelf?
JM: My shelves are long and deep (and my Kindle is full)! When I
really love a book, I will research the author and try to find everything
he/she has written. Sometimes, too, I'll write a fan letter, which I know is
corny. If I love a piece of writing, it will haunt me for days, weeks even,
sometimes years. Here’s what you’ll find on my bookshelves:
Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison),
The Sound and the Fury (William
Faulkner),
Then We Came to the End
(Joshua Ferris),
The Things They Carried
(Tim O'Brien), anything by Philip Roth, especially
American Pastoral and
Patrimony,
Anywhere but Here and
My Hollywood (Mona Simpson). I also
read a lot of non-fiction. I loved
RandomFamily (Adrian
Nicole LeBlanc),
Wild (Cheryl Strayed), and
Behindthe Beautiful Forevers (Katherine Boo), as well as countless books about
history, such as the Robert Caro series on LBJ. We also have hundreds of YA
books that my daughters and I have read over the years, such as
The Penderwicks, the
Hunger Games series, the
Percy Jackson
series, and so many more.
CTW: If you could meet one fictional
character, who would it be and why?
JM: Holden Caulfield. I’d be
interested to find out what he thinks of Facebook and the world of social
networking.
CTW: What's next for you and your writing career?
JM: We actually sold
I Couldn’t Love You More two years
ago, so I’ve been working for almost a year and a half on a new book. All I can
say is that it’s a corporate book—one I’ve been dying to write for years. It’s
set in the HR Department of a small, failing company. The head of the group, an
aging executive has a stroke, and then…
CTW: It sounds great so far. I'll look forward to reading it. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
JM: Read a lot—classics as well as
contemporary fiction to learn how successful books are constructed, why writers
make certain choices (point of view, setting, tone, etc.). Write the kinds of
books you want to read otherwise you'll be less inclined to go back and revise
again and again and again. My novels are never truly finished, even if they're
published and sitting on the shelf. While I may no longer be interested in
spending time with that particular set of characters, I can't help but think
about all the ways the book could be different, the small, insignificant tweaks
that no one but me would ever notice. (It's one reason why I never reread my
books once they're bound and shipped.) Finally, consider trashing your outlines
(see above: I call it “working without a net”). When I start a novel, I have a
general idea of where I want to end up, but I never know how I'll get there.
Part of what compels me to write day after day, chapter after chapter, is the
discovery process, seeing the characters evolve as I get deeper and deeper into
the story. It means many more revisions (I go forward and back, forward and
back over a period of four years (at a minimum) for each book I write), but
your novel will be richer and more honest for it.
CTW: Anything else you would like to share?
JM: I’ve had a very
long and very difficult writing career. I'm not inspired to write as much as
I'm driven, I need to write. That desire, that need, is as palpable and
relentless as any junkie's craving, and it will possess me all day until I can
park myself in a chair and do my work. I love it, I hate it; it's ecstasy when
I'm writing well, it's despair when I'm not. I wouldn't wish this life on
anyone, nor would I, could I, ever give it up. At this moment, though, I’m so grateful
to have a third book in the world. I’m also grateful for readers, and I’d love
to hear what you think of
I Couldn’t
Love You More, so drop me a line at
jillianmedoff@gmail.com.
Read my review of
I Couldn't Love You More here.
The eldest daughter of a traveling salesman, Jillian moved 17 times by
age 17, ultimately ending up in Atlanta, where her new novel is set. She
has a BA from Barnard and an MFA from NYU, and is grateful for having
studied with such luminary writers as Mona Simpson, Jonathan Dee, Robert
Coover, and Alice Walker. She also attended Master Classes with Toni
Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Grace Paley. Although each author
continues to influence her work in powerful and diverse ways, she
suspects few of them, if any, remember her. A former fellow at the
MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, VCCA and Fundacion Valparaiso in
Spain, Jillian taught at NYU and the University of Georgia, but for
only, like, five minutes.
You can read more about her books at
www.jillianmedoff.com. She currently lives in New York with her family,
and has no plans to move anytime soon.
Contact Jillian
Website
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