Ask the Author: Jane Green
Answered Questions (47)
Jane Green
Natalya, I was a journalist throughout my twenties, but I really thing what started it was reading - I was that child always buried in a book and that's truly where it all started. Generally if I am stuck for a topic I look around me, move out of my comfort zone, talk to people, listen for stories and I'm always thinking, always trying to figure people out, and something usually comes...
Jane Green
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Jane Green
Kimberly, I do indeed find inspiration in stories I hear, people I know, situations I observe, and I am ALWAYS observing...I tend to stay a little on the outside, always watching. As for British women reacting differently, I suspect they do a little, but emotions tend to be universal. I have re-introduced British protagonists in my now-very-American-novels, which I am really enjoying because I don't have to second guess how they will react.
Jane Green
Enid, thank you for such a thoughtful question. The moral missteps fascinate me, and that's where the drama lies. Reading about a happy marriage where nothing happens wouldn't make for a very interesting book, but reading about a happy marriage where one partner can still mess up in the most cataclysmic in ways, is what interests me. And then what we do with those mistakes, and how we are all doing the best we can.
Jane Green
Hi Anne, thank you so much! I pull my ideas largely from life, although occasionally from a dinner party conversation, or a magazine article, or something I see who fascinates me. I write in the mornings, although now I take myself off to a self-imposed writing retreat a couple of times a year - usually Inns or B & B's in New Hampshire or Vermont, and lock myself away to write vast amounts for five days!
Jane Green
I think it's entirely possible to be overweight in your head. I have struggled with eating disorders for years, and particularly when young, and used that in writing about Jemima. You may not have been able to tell by looking at me, but inside my head I thought much the way Jemima did.
Jane Green
I remember loving Nancy Mitford's books when I was young, and a series called Flambards. Anything about America fascinated me - Laura Ingalls Wilder, the What Katy Did books. Now I read everything I can get my hands on.
Jane Green
Louisa, I'm at my desk by 8.45 and I don't leave until lunchtime, sometimes early afternoon, and once I'm home I am back to being mum - the secret is all about discipline and compartmentalising!
Jane Green
Luck, which was recently defined to me as being when preparation meets opportunity. I wrote a book, sent it off, people liked it (I still think I was enormously lucky!)
Jane Green
Cathleen Schine, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Jon Ronson (I LOVE non-fiction), AM Homes, David Nicholls...
Jane Green
I usually start with a theme or an idea, jot notes, come up with the characters, do quite detailed pages on who they are and where they have come from. I write a few pages on where I see the first third of the book going, then start writing. I usually go through around four or five edits once I'm done. The first myself, then the next with my editor. Then I have to keep re-reading for typos in the pages, and then finally, a couple of months before publication, I get an Advance Reading Copy - an ARC - which I read again. The months leading up to publication are filled with promotion, these days mostly online, and often a book tour and events on publication.
Jane Green
Mary, I was a journalist and a friend wrote a book which inspired me. I wrote the first half in a week, then sent three chapters and a synopsis off to an agent. He wrote back to say he didn't like it, so I sent it to a further 13, 9 of whom came back to say they loved it...
Jane Green
I have the three parts of the plot before I start, and know the general arc of the story, although am always willing to let it go in a different direction once I start writing, and I then create the characters to tell that story. The Beach House started with a character - Nan - who was based on a woman I used to see riding her bike late at night by the beach, so sometimes it does start with one forceful character.
Jane Green
Ready, willing and able... It has been optioned many times but has never made it past the starter gate and I'm still not sure why as it's definitely the most filmic of all my books.
Jane Green
Lots of advance copies of books that won't be out for another year or so. I adored You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
Jane Green
Planes, trains and long solitary car journeys are fantastic for helping me flesh out a story and think things through...I once read it was something about the ambient noise that helps you think
Jane Green
Thank you so much! 2014 was a year of so many mixed blessings, so I too hope 2015 is a good one, and wishing you the very same!
Jane Green
I write in a linear fashion - come up with the characters, the theme, the plot, then start at the beginning and keep going until I hit the end!
Jane Green
I frequently use the look of people, knowing that within a few pages they will have developed into characters of their own.
Jane Green
Women's Commercial Fiction. At 46 I defy anyone to call me a chick, although I am honored to have been part of a movement, in my early days, that was so important.
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