C: How do you go about developing a new book and where do you go to come up with new ideas?
J: Okay. Well, I get a lot of my ideas from eaves dropping. And I get a lot of ideas from people watching and also just from my everyday life experiences. So, like in my first book, Going Down, if I had a really bad stomach ache, I would give my character an ulcer and she’d wind up in the hospital. So I just am always taking my life and reorienting it for my book. So the sweet spot for a writer is having one foot in your book and one foot in your real life at all times. And when I’m beginning a new novel, I start with a character who’s not unlike myself and I let that character have little adventures that I think of as scenes. And I just start to build. I don’t start at the beginning. I don’t start with any big plot. I start with a tremendous desire to express myself and a character who’s like myself, and I just let her have adventures.
C: So when you’re developing an idea you’ll have some semi-autobiographical elements and often apply an aspect of exaggeration, essentially discovering a cohesive plot by crafting individual scenes that borrow from your real life and then creating links between them.
J: Totally. Rather than scene by scene out of order, I start in the middle. Because if you’ve ever watched one of your favorite TV shows from beginning to end and then gone back and watched it again, you think, wow, the pilot was terrible. You know, it doesn’t sound like them, the acting is stiff, the writing is stiff. They become completely different characters even just after a few episodes. They sink in. But those episodes are in the can, so there’s nothing they can do about it. But when you’re writing a book, you have to go back and change the beginning anyway because you find the character’s voices. You never start at the beginning.
C: I know a lot of times people say, you know, start with your ending, but even that for me feels a little bit prescriptive when it comes to writing fiction.
J: Nothing is harder than writing the ending of a novel except for writing the beginning of a novel. And then you go back and change the ending and then you go back and change the beginning. And then you go back and change the ending and you do that like a thousand times. So why start with the ending if it feels unnatural and you’re going to completely overhaul it anyway. Anybody telling you to do anything is insane when it comes to writing a book, not the least of which is starting with the ending.
C: Do you feel like there’s some element of improv in your writing?
J: That’s a really interesting question. I mean, I have an acting background. I was an actor before I became a writer. So, in a way, that’s my natural way of thinking. So, of course. I was just talking about this with a friend of mine, that it would be strange to be a writer without knowing anything about acting. She was saying every writer should take an acting class.
C: Do you think it helps you get more into the mindset of a character who doesn’t possess the same worldview as you?
J: Well, it helps with comic timing and it helps with dialogue and it helps with understanding motivation. You know, a lot of all of the aspects of play writing or acting are utilized in good writing, of course.
C: Yeah, I was going to ask you about off-Broadway because the students had seen that and were very interested.
J: Well, I would say it’s more like off-off-off-off-off-off-off-Broadway. I like to think that I got to the highest rung of the lowest level. There’s a performance artist who’s very famous named Penny Arcade, and I played the young Penny in a lot of her shows at La Mama, PS. 122, which is a theater, not a school. She was writing plays and one woman shows and multi-character shows and she’s done all kinds of things, and so I was in a lot of shows with her performing as the younger version of herself. She’s my mentor in a lot of ways. I learned a lot from her process, which is real creative, as you say, improv. Like really taking making something from nothing. There’s a famous improv book called something wonderful right away that would be helpful for writers. The only difference is that writing a book takes years.
C: What do you think are both the shortest and longest amounts of time that it has taken you to write a book?
J: Well, that’s also a hard question. I mean, my first four books took four years to write. One of them really took more like five years because I lost my computer in a deli with all my stuff in it. That kind of reminds me. I lost my computer another time. It was right here. I got out of a cab to come here and the cab took off and I realized my computer was in the cab. And then I started running down the street screaming and then a truck pulled up and I got into a stranger’s truck. So I was with this scary guy and we followed the cab and we retrieved the computer. Then I did it another time. Anyway, don’t do that.
C: I mean it reminds me of this story. There’s this author Mikhail Bulgakov, and he’s most famous for his work The Master and Margarita. And he was a state sponsored play right in the USSR, but a lot of his work started taking a more critical tone towards the USSR, so his plays and books were suppressed and couldn’t be published. In a fit of rage he burnt his draft of the novel, but he eventually rewrote it piece by piece because he had large chunks of it completely committed to memory.
J: Well, I don’t have anything memorized, but it is possible to recreate things if you do it right away. You can’t wait. Like yesterday, Shepard’s homework flew out the window. It’s like some social studies subject. He had to redo it right away or he was going to forget it all.
C: What did you find the process of rewriting your lost work to be like?
J: It’s all humbling and you just feel like a huge idiot, of course, but it’s also just work. I mean, and this is a loaded word, but I’ve always felt very privileged to get to do this work. Like I always say to my workshop students when they complain that this isn’t factory work. You know, we’re lucky to get to do this kind of work, even if we never get paid a penny in our lives.
C: That’s a good way to think about it.
J: I mean, I like it. So I don’t know what that particular process was, but sort of a blur of hell. But I did it and all those books got published. And then there was a 13-year gap between my most recent book, Swanna in Love and the book prior to that, which was called The Seven-Year Bitch. So you could say that Swanna in Love took 13 years. But it really didn’t because I wrote it, it seems to me, very quickly during COVID. I was writing this other book for 13 years and I brought in a flashback paragraph, because I read in my workshop too sometimes. And everybody loved this paragraph and I loved the paragraph and I loved the flashback. And then I thought, I want this to be the whole book. So I abandoned the original book and I took that paragraph and developed it into another book. Now I’m going back to the book I abandoned and I’m working on that.
C: Well that’s all very circuitous.
J: Yeah, exactly. So I don’t know how long anything takes. So far it takes at least four years if you don’t lose anything.
C: Do you feel like becoming a mother has changed your writing practice in any way? That could be in terms of your subject matter or trying to find the time to work writing into your daily life.
J: Well, it didn’t help. You know, a lot of people thought that when I became a mother, I would become this creative goddess. I would rise from my bed and nurse my babies and somehow be filled with creativity. But you know, I was pretty tired and angry a lot of the time. But I had help and, again, I was very lucky. Being a mother meant I had less of certain experiences. I wasn’t, you know, going home with strange men every night or anything like that—which is very helpful for a writer. You have to be so alive, and it’s hard to be alive when you have to be home, when you have to be at pickup at 2:40, but I do okay.
C: Absolutely. I mean, you’re still publishing, still writing.
J: There’s still time in my life to go home with different guys every night, like with Shepard and Jasper and Andy.
C: What locations feel most important to your writing practice? These could be places that you physically frequent, places that inspire you despite not actively being there, or places that you find yourself writing about often.
J: Well, I’ve always loved New York and have always set my books in New York. My most recent book takes place in Vermont, but the character is trying to get back to New York. My most recent book is called Swanna in Love and it’s about a 14-year-old girl who has a love affair with a 38-year-old married guy. She’s picked up by her mother from summer camp, and her mother has a new boyfriend. They pick her up in this truck and take her to an artist colony that doesn’t allow kids. And she and her brother have to sleep in the back of this truck. And she’s desperate to get back to New York. So, even though it takes place in Vermont, it really sort of takes place in New York because she’s constantly thinking about New York and reminiscing about it. I used to have this rule that my character would only leave New York if it was absolutely necessary. Otherwise, I just set everything in New York. But now, of course, I want to write about Paris because of my recent visit, so my next book after the one I’m writing now, I think will take place in Paris.
C: Do you find yourself setting prescriptions or rules for your writing like that often?
J: I have rules that are for me. I mean, things that have worked like starting in the middle, which I mentioned before. Not too many rules though. But of course, I have things that I do. And I teach them. I have something I call the survey which is a writing and editing technique that I developed. It’s a way of outlining my work after I’ve written it instead of before. I don’t believe in outlining. I don’t know any literary writers who outline. You can outline if you want to, but you have to remain very flexible and make sure that you don’t just go from point A to point B because the richness happens in things that you could never imagine are going to happen. But then I outline after the fact. So it’s a way of surveying what I’ve done instead of what I’m going to do.
C: And what do you feel like the purpose of that is? Is it to make sure that what you’re writing about feels cohesive?
J: Yeah, it’s a way to protect the complete spontaneity and creativity of the writing while also keeping total control over the timing, passage of time, character development, arcs, all of that stuff.
C: How often do you find yourself rereading? Obviously, I know editing and looking back at your work is very important to every writer. Do you feel that by the time you’ve finished writing a book that you’ve read the text itself 100 times over?
J: You have to. I mean, first of all, I’m in a workshop, which I think is so important. In the workshops that I lead I also bring my work in and read out loud along with everybody else. So I’ve heard myself read the whole book out loud, and you have to read it over and over again. You just do. And one of the hardest parts actually is that final read. There are so many writers who just say, I don’t need to read it that one last time, but you really, really do. I know a guy, a very wealthy man who pays a prostitute and makes her sit and listen to him read his novels.
C: It feels like there may be a better way to go about that.
J: I know, like Final Draft can read it back to you. And I think every Mac now will read your book back to you.
C: Is this some kind of Gandhian “she’s in the room but I’m not going to touch her” kind of thing or what’s going on.
J: Listen, I’m just trying to share with the students at the new school all of the special tricks and little quirks that you could do.
C: So you would recommend young writers thinking about publishing their first book to hire a prostitute.
J: Well, probably not. But I just thought you should know about it.
C: Have you ever stepped into more fantastic realms of writing or explored subject matters that extend outside of the bounds of reality?
J: Only when I was a kid. There was a store on this block here. It sold crazy, crazy old antique jewelry. And the guy made these silver rings with eyeballs. And the whole window of the place was filled with eyeball rings. They looked really realistic. And when I was in the eighth grade or something I wrote a short story called Snake Eyes inspired by one of those eyeball rings. And I submitted it to a short story competition and I didn’t win, and I was disappointed because people had thought it was a really good story. And then I got a call that I did win because the person who won turned out to have completely plagiarized his whole story from Hemingway, and I was really happy.
C: I find it hilarious that there was another eighth grader out there running around plagiarizing Hemingway. I love that.
C: How do you see New York City reflected in your writing? Do you feel like New York exists as its own character in your story?
J: I hate when writing teachers say that. But yeah, I guess. I mean, you want the place to come alive around you, but it’s not really a character. But people love to say that. It’s just something they kind of throw out there. Is New York a character in your books? Yeah, sure. Going Down was translated into a lot of languages. And you get these you know, you get these books sent to you that you have no say in any of the design decisions for, and a lot of the times they change the cover. Sometimes they even change the title. There used to be this commercial on TV for this device that old people would wear around their necks in the case of a nasty fall.
C: Life lock, right? “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
J: Yeah, exactly. So my first book, Going Down, when it was published in German, the translation of the title was, Help I’ve Fallen, and all of my friends were like, “and I can’t get up.” In the Japanese edition of Going Down, the end papers featured this beautiful map of the island of Manhattan with a star that marked all of the places that the main character travelled to. You know, you see a star by the West Fourth Street basketball courts and a star by the Jefferson Dorm for NYU and a star by this place and that place.
C: I wonder if there’s a reader out there that came to New York after reading Going Down and did the whole tour of all of the locations.
J: I think they did because people have told me that readers have come in and said that they read the book and that’s why they came to the location.
C: What forms of community have been most important to the development of your writing process?
J: Oh, my workshop, 100%. My workshop, my workshop, my workshop. I actually now have four. Three on Zoom and one in person.
C: And you teach all of them?
J: Yes, I teach them, and they’re just my lifeline. I recommend anybody who wants to write a book to find a great workshop. It has to be a great workshop though. Not just any workshop. And then I also belong to a place called the writer’s room, which is kind of like an urban writer’s colony. It’s open 24/7, seven days a week and I can go there and write. And so that’s become a really important community for me. And let’s see, therapy is a good thing for a writer. Therapy is a writer’s best friend, and of course your local bar is a must have.
C: Therapy seems great because it’s like having somebody reflect your life back to you and point out all of the curious little details that you may have overlooked.
J: Yeah, sure. I discuss my book with my therapist all the time—my characters, what I’m trying to do, what I’m trying to say. For instance, in Swanna in Love, at the end of the book, I have to get the protagonist home to New York somehow, because clearly she does end up back in New York at some point. And the book is sort of loosely based on something that really happened to me. So I told my shrink, I just can’t remember coming back to New York. I just can’t remember it. I mean, I know I got home to New York. I grew up here, but I can’t remember it. And my shrink said, why does your character have to remember? And so my character doesn’t remember. So that’s a very long boring way of my saying I have had some very important revelations courtesy of my shrink.
C: Do you have any friends or other writers that you’re in direct correspondence with?
J: Definitely. And that’s a huge support for writers. My friend Arthur Nersesian, who wrote a book called The Fuck-Up and he has a new book out called Shit Show. He’s written many, many, many books including one that was made into a movie called My Dead Boyfriend. I depend on him all the time. We go out to lunch and discuss our trials and problems and of course the writers in my writing workshop and yeah, I have many writing friends who I really rely on.
C: Obviously, since I’m friends with Jasper, I wanted to ask how you see your kids reflected in your writing.
J: In my recent book, Swanna in love, she’s fourteen and she has an eight-year-old brother who she’s sort of taking care of, and I would say like 90% of this dialogue came directly from Jasper and Shepard when they were little. But it’s also very much based on my own younger brother. But of course, there are all of these adorable things that they said. I have a book called Little Stalker, but when I wrote it, it was called Run From Your Life. That’s what I wanted to call it, “Run From Your Life.” And the reason I wanted to call it “Run From Your Life” was one day Jasper was running around the house screaming. And I said, “what’s wrong?” And he said, “there’s a monster, run from your life.” And I said, “the expression is run for your life.” And he stopped and he looked at me and he said, “why would I run for my life? There’s a monster. Run from your life.” So my inspiration from them is mostly a lot of great dialogue and of course, a lot of emotions. You know, it’s a big deal having kids. Any life thing you can go through as a writer is a good thing to go through.
C: What advice, and this is a shoe in, obviously, but, what advice would you give to young writers just starting their careers.
J: If I had thought when I started writing that I had to have a big idea, a concept, a point I had to make, a big philosophy, a big plot, a great plot device that had to be the basis of the great American novel that would would just keep the pages turning and make all of these great points—if I had thought that I had to have an outline that people told me I needed, I would have never written one word. What I did have was the tremendous desire to express myself. And if you have this tremendous desire to express yourself and you sink into a character who’s not unlike yourself and you just let that character go on tiny adventures, which ultimately become scenes, then I think you can absolutely write a novel.