Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of The Jane Austen Book Club which spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Novel Kicks caught up with Karen Joy Fowler……

Describe your typical writing day?

Author Photo: Beth Gwinn

On my typical writing day I don’t write.  Sad, but true.  I answer my email, I check out various blogs I like, I answer more of my email.  Then it’s lunchtime.  I believe I’m going to start to write at any moment, but after lunch I have more email and all the blogs have updated.  The dog needs to be walked and it’s time to start dinner.  Besides, by late afternoon I’m too tired for the sustained concentration of writing a book.  I’m disappointed, but strangely optimistic about tomorrow.  Which may or may not be a rinse and repeat sort of day.

Where do you find your inspiration?

Anywhere and everywhere.  I eavesdrop when strangers talk – very easy in this day of the cell phone.  I misunderstand the lyrics to rock songs in a fruitful way.  I get ideas from reading other people’s fabulous stories and poems.  And history books, of course.  Especially inaccurate history books – history books with attitude and agenda.  Scientific studies, especially if I only know about them because of eavesdropping (see above.)  I find that a little bit of information about something is much more inspiring than a lot of information about it.  Though if the story I want to write needs a lot of information, I’m happy to go and get it.

What’s your editing process like?

I love rewriting – much more pleasurable than the first draft – so I do a ton of it and I do it everyday.  I’m always polishing the language, moving the scenes about, changing the location, changing the time period.  Tinker, tinker, tinker.  It’s the best part.

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Going to work in your bedroom slippers.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learnt since becoming a writer?

Apparently I haven’t learned it yet.  I have no idea.  The biggest surprise is that it doesn’t get easier.  It feels like every book is harder than the last, but my husband assures me this isn’t true – I am always in despair that I won’t be able to finish and this is the way I always have been.

Had you always wanted to be a writer? What was your journey to publication like?

I had wanted to be a writer on and off since I was a child, but it’s an ambition I lost track of for long parts of my life.  More persistent was the desire to raise and train dogs though I’ve never had a well-behaved dog in my life.  Some dreams cannot be realized.

The road to publication was muddy and serpentine.  I collected 23 rejections on my first novel alone before it was purchased.  I have weighty files of rejection letters for poetry and short stories.  It’s actually immensely satisfying to me now, how many rejections I got.

Ideal Dinner Guests (Dead or Alive)

Julia Childs and Meryl Streep pretending to be Julia Childs.

Is there a book by another author that you’d wish you’d written and why?

To answer with recent books only – I wish I’d written Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but Susanne Clarke did instead.  I wish I’d written Jedidiah Berry’s The Manual of Detection.  I can’t articulate exactly why – only that both books made me enormously happy when I read them.  Big happy.

Top five tips for new writers?

1)  Read.

2) Read more. Go into parts of the library you never go and read some books from those shelves.

3) Think about setting.  The most common lack I see in student and early work is the absence of a good sense of where we are and what is around happening around our protagonists.  Try to set your scenes in places where the setting has an impact on what people do and say.

4) Listen carefully when people critique your work, but be cautious about taking advice unless you feel that you understand how you are making your piece better by doing so.

5) Keep it fun.  If you find that you’re losing the pleasure you once had in it, figure out what you can do to get it back again.  None of the rest – the publishing, the readings – is reliably fun (though it may be), so try to keep loving the doing of it.

To find out more about Karen Joy Fowler, click here for her website.

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by

Laura

I'm Laura. I started Novel Kicks back in 2009 as I wanted a place to discuss books and writing - two loves of my life. As someone who has anxiety, these two things give me, and I am sure countless others, a much needed escape.
There is a monthly book club, writing exercises, prompts, reviews, author interviews, competitions and guest posts. I cover many genres and I hope there is something for everyone.
I grew up by the sea in Dorset and currently live in Poole with my husband, Chris and three cats. I love writing and have a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing from Falmouth University. I am writing my first book. If only I could stop pressing delete. Chris has threatened to stop it from working. Haha.
I have always loved creative writing since I was in first school and would very much like to meet my teacher, Miss Sayers, to say thank you for all the encouragement she gave me then.
When not writing, I love reading, cats, Disney, singing (I can't sing but this doesn't stop me,) and falling into a good TV show or film. If I could step into any fictional world, it would be amongst the characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.
I love reading many genres and discovering new authors.