Why We Write (22 page)

Luddite-ish

Can you believe it? I still write in WordPerfect. Why? Certainly not because I’m superstitious. I’m passionately against superstitions, talismans, ritual, routines. When you’re a writer, it’s so easy to become a freak.

Everything I have is in WordPerfect, and I can’t bear to contemplate changing that. It’s like being on a train: it’s too late to get off fifteen stops ago. I just got an iPad. I haven’t learned to use it yet, but the first thing I did was to download the WordPerfect app.

Nondesperate housewife

I think it might surprise my readers to know that I’m a housewife in Nashville, and I’ve got a really dull life. People imagine that I live so glamorously. The truth is, I stay home as much as I possibly can. And when I am home, I do the laundry, I keep house. I’m like a dream wife because I make all this money and I make a really good dinner every night and everything’s clean. I iron all the handkerchiefs. I’m extraordinarily lucky to have a happy, happy marriage.

People ask me, “If you could go anywhere you want to go, where would you be?” And I say, “Home.” I don’t go to artists’ colonies to write now that I’m older. I want my work to be at home. I don’t ever want to tell myself that I work better someplace else. I want to work the very best at home.

Fiction and nonfiction

I was a contributing editor at
Bridal Guide
for one year, and a freelance writer for years after that, starting when I was twenty-two. Since then I’ve had a very healthy career as a magazine writer and an essayist. I know what it means to write for money, to write for an audience. I just love writing essays, but I do a lot less of it now because there are fewer magazines. I enjoy it, but I’d never sit down and write an essay unless someone asks me to do it.

I figured out very early that I could make as much money writing magazine articles as I could teaching, and that magazine writing is infinitely easier. I’m a fiction writer. Do I want to spend three months writing a piece on global warming for the
Nation
for seven hundred dollars or a piece on shoes for
Vogue
that takes three hours and pays me three thousand dollars? You don’t have to ask me twice. I hardly ever say no to a magazine assignment. I’m a novelist, so it’s fun to do something I’ll be done with in one night. When I’m holed up for years at a time writing a novel, my friends can see my name in a magazine and know that I’m not dead.

Just last week I wrote a piece for a catalog that sells “tools for writers.” They’re doing a little book to sell in their catalog about writers and their talismans. They asked me to write eight hundred words, for which they’d give me a two-hundred-dollar gift card. I thought, turning them down will take more energy than writing it. So I wrote a piece about how much I like having my dog around while I write.

Nonfiction is totally different from fiction. If you’re writing an eight-hundred-page book about Chihuahuas, you need to make sure that no one else will turn in their book about Chihuahuas before you do. That’s not really a problem with a novel.

When I was halfway through
Truth & Beauty
, there were inklings that someone else might be writing about my friend Lucy Grealy. So I sold the book before it was finished, to make sure I had a publisher who was committed. But I was going to write that book whether a publisher bought it or not.

As far as fiction is concerned, I’ve never sold a book before I finished it and I never will. I write fiction entirely for myself. I write the book I want to read. It’s the story in my head that I can’t find in an existing book. The commercial success, or potential commercial success, of a book has no impact on me.

Let’s remember: writing a book isn’t curing cancer. This is
literary fiction. It doesn’t add up to a hill of beans. If I write something terrible or weird, fine. If I turn in a book and my publisher says, “Ann, this is not for us,” if I don’t agree with their critique, I’ll go to another publisher rather than make changes.

When I finished
Bel Canto
, an editor who read it said, “I like the book, but there are some things I’ll take out. That Russian character is dreadful.” I said, “I really respect your opinion. Good luck with your life.” Thank God I didn’t have a contract with that editor, so I didn’t have to take the Russian out. I never want to feel like an indentured servant to a publisher.

Lucky

I say all the time that I had the last great writing career, because I was allowed to have it. I feel very, very fortunate that I got on board when I did.

I published my first book at twenty-seven, at a time when a publisher was willing to stick by their authors, even the ones who didn’t sell a million copies. In my early days, if you looked up the definition of a midlist author, you’d find a picture of me. But I kept writing books, and they kept giving me advances. I got forty-five thousand dollars for
Patron Saint
, fifty thousand dollars for
Taft
, fifty-five thousand for
The Magician’s Assistant
. Writing was my job, and my advances went up slowly and steadily, like getting raises at the office.

I don’t know who gets forty-five thousand dollars for a first novel anymore. Everyone thinks Liz Gilbert had a huge hit with her first book, but
Eat, Pray, Love
was her fourth book! Before that she published a beautiful collection of short stories,
a novel, and a biography. No one realizes she wasn’t an overnight success.

Nowadays, publishers look at your sales numbers, and if you’re not coming in with enough, you’re through. I was lucky it was my fourth book that was a big hit. The success didn’t mess with my mind the way it might have if I’d had that kind of hit with my first.

Orange you glad?

My happiest moment as a writer was winning the Orange Prize, in part because I’d lost it for
Magician’s Assistant.
At the time that I lost, I thought it was fine because it’s such a pleasure to be nominated, and because Carol Shields won, and she should have won. But when I won I thought, “Oh my God, this is really better. This is a lot more fun than losing.”

My father, stepmother, husband, and my English cousins came to London for the ceremony at the London Opera House. It was such a glamorous night, really over-the-top gorgeousness. My psychological makeup is such that it’s very hard for me to access the moment, especially a moment in which I’m winning. But I felt that moment and it felt great.

Happiness is a good hotel

As my books have started selling in large numbers, here’s what’s changed in my career: I get better hotel rooms.

When I started, I drove my book tours. I had a budget. I had to get to twenty-three cities for three thousand dollars. I drove every night till I was falling asleep.

That’s changed. I have the most amazing publicist. Say what you want about your editor and your agent, but it’s your publicist who makes you or breaks you. My publicist has been with me from
Bel Canto.
Did my career get a whole lot better because my publicist got a whole lot better? That seems really likely.

When my last editor got a job at a different publishing house, she wanted me to come with her. I told her, “You know there’s no way in the world I’d leave my publicist. You’ll have to get her to switch houses, too.” My publicist is the architect of my life. She’ll call me and say, “They want you to do this thing in Wisconsin.” I say, “If you want me to do it, I’ll do it.” There’s nothing more important to me than my time, and she’s in charge of my time.

I have a friend whose book is coming out soon. It’s her first time with a new publishing house, and the publicist is abominable. I’ve been trying not to tell her, “You’re sunk. If your publicist is this bad, it’s over.”

Truth and books

I’m a very truth-oriented person. I know that as I’m writing, I’m going to keep telling myself to tell the truth about everything. At the same time, I am such a good girl that I don’t want to write things that might hurt or upset anyone. I wouldn’t have written
Truth & Beauty
if Lucy hadn’t died.

But now I’m pushing fifty. It’s time to be able to write about anything I want to write about. I don’t want to make allowances as I’m going along, trying to save this person or that person’s feelings.

Anyway, the truth is such a subjective thing. While I was writing about Lucy, a friend of hers called and asked me how the book was coming along. I told her I was up to the part about Lucy getting breast implants. Her friend said, “That was a huge secret. Lucy didn’t want anyone to know.” I said, “What? Lucy was so proud of those breasts. She showed them to everyone.”

So I called another friend and asked her what to do. She told me, “The first time I ever met Lucy, she had her shirt off. She was Xeroxing her breasts in the Radcliffe office.” There you have it: different people, different truths.

J
odi Picoult has published twenty novels in the past twenty years, the past six of them blockbuster bestsellers. Four of her books were made into Lifetime movies; one was made into a feature film. She’s been a regular on the
New York Times
bestseller list ever since, and her books have sold more than fourteen million copies worldwide.

Picoult’s novels have connected with her readers in a way that is every publisher’s dream
and
every author’s. From school shootings to organ donation to autism, her books have connected the hottest social issues of our time to the deepest, most universal emotional dilemmas.

With the 2011 publication of
Sing You Home
, Jodi Picoult
stepped out from behind the writerly curtain and became an eager advocate for gay rights—the issue at the core of the novel and at the core of her family, which includes her gay son. Picoult is active on Twitter, where her profile photo shows her with silver duct tape over her mouth, “NO H8” stenciled onto her cheek, and her fingers arched to form a heart.