SHADOWS FALL N FRIENDS: Joy Fielding

My guest this week on SHADOWS FALL N FRIENDS is New York Times bestselling and award-winning author, Joy Fielding. I just finished reading her novel Charley's Web and thoroughly enjoyed it. Her new novel Still Life promises to be just as good. I've loved Joy's suspense novels ever since reading her first The Other Woman which I still have and re-read often. It's filled with post-it notes and highlighted passages. Reading this novel made me realize that women's lives and the things that matter to women most could enhance the multi-layered conflict in a suspense novel and add the kind of depth that keeps a reader turning pages.

Who is Joy Fielding? It would be impossible for me to condense the biography on Joy's web site. What an interesting life she has led.

Hi Joy, and welcome to SHADOWS FALL N FRIENDS. I'm glad you could join us today. When did you first attempt fiction? Tell us a bit about your writing history.

I started writing when I was eight years old, sending a very short
story to Jack&Jill magazine. It was rejected, as was my next attempt,
at 12, to sell a TV script I'd written. I excelled at English
composition in high school and continued my studies in English
literature at University. After some years spent trying to be an
actress, with modest success, I returned to my first love - writing. I
succeeded in selling two scripts to the Canadian Broadcasting Company
(CBC) and then wrote my first novel, The Best of Friends, which is no
longer in print.

What inspired you to write STILL LIFE?

I often explore some of my deepest fears when writing, and being
trapped in a coma is high on that list. I also like to explore what
happens to bright, successful women - women who seem to have it all -
when a cataclysmic event occurs in their lives to change everything.
People often refer to this as women-in-jeopardy, a term I find somewhat
disparaging. We don't describe fiction for men as being about men in
jeopardy. And isn't most fiction about people in some form of peril?
So, I decided to write a story about a young woman who on the surface
has it all, but then is thrown into a possibly irreversible coma after
she is hit by a car. Only she can hear everything that is being said,
and what she hears is that someone tried to kill her. I found the whole
idea of being trapped like that fascinating, and decided it would be a
real challenge to try to tell this story from the point of view of the
woman in the coma.

I just finished reading the memoir by ABC journalist, Bob Woodward, and his wife, Lee, about what it was like when he was injured by an IED in Iraq and fell into a coma for 5 weeks. I`m looking forward to reading about your protagonist`s experience. What kind of work routine did you use?

I try to write every day for at least four hours. I prefer to write in the morning when I'm freshest, but one of the nice things about being a writer is the flexibility you have, so if I can't write in the morning, I'll write in the afternoon or even the evening. Sometimes I'll write all day, if I'm on a roll. We travel a lot, so I'm often interrupted for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. Usually it takes a year from the time I first get an idea ùntil the time the book hits
the stores. Of that, about 6 months is spent actually writing.

What was the biggest challenge you encountered completing this book?

The biggest challenge when writing this book was that it had to be
told from the perspective of someone who is in a coma. Casey can't
move, talk, see, or communicate in any way, so all the action has to
take place at her bedside. This is very limiting, and makes Casey the
ultimate passive heroine. I find that readers - certainly ones like me
- tend to get very impatient with characters who are too passive.
Characters need to be doing things. So the challenge was to make the
characters around Casey as interesting as possible. Each had to have a
life and agenda of their own. And Casey had to have a sharp mind and a
good sense of humor, so that the reader could relate to her and like
her. I also used flashbacks to get Casey out of that bed and give the
reader another side of her - what she was like before the accident. The
situation was interesting in itself, but after you've laid out the
general parameters, you have to keep things moving along.

What was the greatest reward?

The biggest reward, as always, is the positive response I get from
my readers, almost all of whom seem to really love the book. Also, I
love actually seeing the book in print.

Why did you choose this particular title for your work?

Titles are tricky, and often the hardest part of writing the book.
You really have to try to sum up the book in a couple of words, or at
least indicate what the book is about on some level. The title STILL LIFE came to be very early because I thought it described Casey's situation perfectly. Also, it could refer to a type of painting, and since Casey is a decorator, it had added resonance.

What advice would you give to writers trying to get published?

The best advice I can give budding writers is to read, read, read.
As for the writing itself, writing is as much about discipline as it is
about imagination and life experience. You have to be prepared to sit
down and write for at least three hours every day whether you feel like
it or not. If you wait for inspiration to strike, you'll only write one
book. You have to think of it as your job - it's what you do. So DO IT!

As for getting published, gone are the days when a writer could simply
send his/her book off to a publishing house. Now you need an agent. So
the first thing you have to do is interest an agent. This isn't easy,
especially today. So, make sure whatever you send an agent - there are
books that list agents or look on the Web - is what you consider your
best work. You're only going to get one shot at it, so make sure you
think it's your final, perfect draft. Of course the agent (and later,
the publisher) will probably consider it your first draft, so be
prepared to do a lot more rewriting, but don't send anything to an
agent that you don't think is already perfect. You can send it to a
whole bunch of agents at once, and you'll probably have to wait a while
before you hear from anyone, but if you believe in yourself and you're
not easily dissuaded, hang in there. Lots of books have been rejected
by countless publishers and agents, some many times, and then go on to
be huge successes. But you have to really love to write because the
odds are against you.

What book would you tell them is a must to read and why?

This really depends on the kind of book you want to write. I
recommend reading lots of the kind of fiction that you want to write
and examining how the writers did it, how they used setting and
characters and dialogue, how they built suspense and constructed a
plot, etc. There's no magic key, just a lot of trial and error until
hopefully you find your own voice.

Who is your favourite author and why?

My favorite authors are Philip Roth and Carl Hiaasen.

I enjoy Philip Roth too. What book are you reading right now?

I just finished reading Dan Hill's autobiography I AM MY FATHER`S SON and Laura Lippman's LIFE SENTENCES. I'm currently reading Mary
Gaitskill's book of short stories DON`T CRY.

What advice would you give to a debut novelist to survive in
today’s publishing world?

It's very hard to give advice in this regard. The best advice I can give is that if
you want to be a writer, especially today, you have to love what you
do. You can't do it for the money because the odds are you aren't going
to make any. And you have to be comfortable spending a lot of time
alone in a room with nothing but your own thoughts and insecurities.

So if you are, and if you have someone who can support you until you do
start making money, then as I said before, just sit down and get busy.
You have to have tremendous self-confidence, and you have to be
prepared to listen to - and accept - criticism, because you're going to
get a lot of it.

Everyone likes to think they have a book in them, just like a lot of people think they can paint like Picasso. The truth is they can't, and just because you've had an interesting life or you have a vivid imagination, that doesn't make you a writer. You also need the discipline to create a story out of an idea and then see it through to its conclusion. To this end, I really recommend doing an outline. It will help you focus your thoughts and make the writing of the book a little easier.

Thanks so much for being our guest today, Joy. I`m looking forward to reading STILL LIFE. Congratulations on the longevity of your successful career.