Friday 30 April 2010

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult spoke yesterday at Hexham Book Festival and sounded relentlessly upbeat and charming. She has written 17 novels, but I've read only one of them - My Sister's Keeper.
As I mused on the energy she put into her talk, it seems she does the same thing with her writing. She rises, she told us, at 5am every day and goes for a three hour walk with a friend and gossips all the way. Once the kids are off to school she settles down to writing, which she does until 3pm when she metamorphoses into a mom again and starts car-pooling.
She follows this routine for nine months of the year, and reserves the other three for PR work, visiting spots all over the globe. Yes, she assured us, she devotes nine months to each new title. That includes research, writing, editing, until it is finally out of her hands and with the publisher.
(I felt exhausted by this stage, and I was only listening.) Within that time period she might also be editing another title, and doing research for the next novel.
She gave a reading from her latest title: House Rules, which is about a boy with Asperger's Syndrome who falls foul of the American legal system.

2 comments:

Anita Davison said...

I am always fascinated to hear authors talk, they are never quite what you expect. Her schedule sounds exhausting, but it sounds as if she has someone to do the housework - that's envy talking!

Jen Black said...

Don't I sympathise - I keep tellingmyself 5,4,3 more chapters and then I'll do a really GOOD spring clean. Wat do you bet it never gets done?
Jen

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