An Author In The Flesh

What might a published author look like? Photogenic, perhaps? Slim, blond, athletic? Jodi Picoult is none of that. There's hope for us all.

An average looking woman with the figure of a mother of three, she could blend in with any crowd at the market. At a recent talk given as part of her book tour, Ms. Picoult proved to be bright and personable, with a wicked sense of humor and an easy manner. For an hour, she stood alone on the stage at the local community center and held the rapt attention of a sizable crowd.

For about twenty minutes, she read from her newest release, 19 Minutes, which deals with the topic of high school bullying and touches heavily on the Columbine incident. She mentioned that much of her research for the book came from interviews with the Littleton, CO sheriffs, lending that certain air to her story that makes me feel as if I am reading the newspapers again. One of the characters in her newest novel, which was written three years ago and is just now being released, was based on her interviews with a survivor of a Minnesota school shooting. Even fictional characters have to have real emotions, or they fall flat, and Ms. Picoult did a fine job of explaining why the actors on her literary stage make sense.

The remainder of the time was passed in a question and answer session, with most of the audience members somewhat curious about where she finds her topics. Given that she is a mother, like the ladies who attended, she described her inspiration in the issues that she sees. Hence, her stories often revolve around children and parents, with plots springing from the authorial "What if" that drives all writers.

Did I ask her how she landed an agent? Or does she have a couple of first manuscripts gathering dust under the bed, never to see the light of day? Of course not, I'm a rank coward and would never raise my hand.

One participant did ask if she wrote from an outline or winged it, and it was a relief to me to find out that she writes as I do. Start with a beginning and an end, and then let the characters tell their story. Even if they go where you did not expect them to.

As for writers' block, she doesn't believe in it and neither do I. Write whenever you can, she said today, if it's ten minutes or a day. And if it's a load of garbage that comes out sometimes, don't worry because you can edit later. It's more important to write.

Ms. Picoult also is attached to her characters, bringing back a couple from previous novels because she was so fond of them. I don't feel like such a freak anymore, not when I hear that a published author looks on these imaginary people as nearly real.

Funny to listen to someone who's made it to the Big Show, and realize that you do things like they do without ever being trained in this curious art of writing. Pity that the literary agents don't care about the process, only the query letter. Since my query letters are getting more and more lame by the week.