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GLAM Book Chat: Jodi Picoult

What are you reading right now?

You could be home by now by Tracy Manaster.

What’s the biggest compliment you’ve received? 

That something I’ve written has dramatically changed someone’s life. When you write fiction you don’t expect that, but I’ve received emails from people who have read my book The Pact and they’ve said that after reading my book they’re going to tell someone they feel suicidal and that’s really special.

What’s your relationship with psychics?

I had my first experience with the paranormal when I was writing another book, Second Glance; I went out with ghost hunters. There were just things that happened that I cannot explain but that I have viable proof of. Interestingly ghost hunters will tell you not to believe in the paranormal until you have an experience with the paranormal yourself.

When I was writing Leaving Time, I met with someone called Chip Coffey and there were things he told me that people shouldn’t have known about me – I mean, I’m pretty google-able but not everything about me is on there! One thing that really got me: in my first interview with Chip, we talked, amongst other things, about my grandparents who, at that time, were both still alive. Some time after our interview, my grandfather passed away and my grandmother was having a really hard time dealing with his death. One day, about 6 months after our first interview, I called Chip – out of the blue – to ask a question about Serenity, the psychic in Leaving Time, and as I started talking he said, “Can I just interrupt you? I have a message from your grandfather.” I was like, how did he even know my grandfather had died? Then he said, “He wants your grandmother to know that it’s not her time and that when it is, he will come and get her.” Could he have been looking at the New York State death records? Yes, he could have. But why would he have done so? It was just weird.

Personally, I believe that there might be some people who have a greater sensitivity to things that the rest of us don’t. It’s kind of like having really great hearing or great vision. It’s a sense that many of us don’t have. But at the same time, I do believe there are a lot of charlatans out there!

How do you conduct your research?

I start with a ‘What if?’ question and then the characters pop into my mind and they start talking to me; they become very real to me. I want to be able to speak with authority for them, so for example, if one of my characters is a nurse, I want to know what she would know. And it’s at that point that I usually decide that I have to speak to a real nurse, or in Leaving Time’s case a real psychic and a real elephant researcher. I’ve found that most people really like being experts for a day and I couldn’t write my books without their knowledge. With Leaving Time, every anecdote that you read about elephants actually happened, they were experiences of real elephants and real elephant researchers.

What would you like people to take from

There’s one thing that Chip said that wound up being in the novel and it’s this: if you lose someone, all you have to do is think of them and they’re with you again. It’s very simple but very true.

The other thing I want people to take away from this is how magnificent elephants are and how threatened they are. South Africans are very rhino-centric but elephants cannot be neglected either.

You sold the film rights to

Yes, I would. And the reason is when you have a movie tie-in, your book becomes a bestseller again and ultimately I’m in the business of selling books. I want people to read my books. And that’s what happened with My Sister’s Keeper, the film may have been different to the book but it made my book a bestseller again – and the people who read the book knew the right ending! I really do hope Leaving Time does become a film, because I can see how beautiful it would be.

What are the perks of being a novelist?

You get to travel to beautiful places like South Africa! Another big perk is that I am my own boss. I am on a contract but I get to write whatever I want – which isn’t a perk that all novelists have – and I get to, to some extent, set my own schedule. And I can go to work in my pyjamas if I want to.

What are the disadvantages?

It’s much harder than people think: it can be very gruelling to sit at a desk for eight hours a day and create from scratch. The other thing is: my fans. I love my fans and I’ve made myself very accessible to them; they can email me directly on my website (I answer all my own emails), they can contact me on Twitter, too – I always write back, even to the people who say mean things. It’s great to have that, but there are days when everyone wants a piece of you.

What’s also really hard as an author is that the internet, while it’s been great at bringing my fans closer to me, it’s also enabled them to say nasty things to me. How would you like it if you spent two years putting your best effort into writing a book and someone said, “Well this is absolute crap. There was a typo on page 13”? I don’t mind constructive criticism but if you’re leaving a comment on Amazon.com, at least have the courage to put your name behind it.

You write about very controversial, very difficult topics. How do you distance yourself from such tragic, and often heartbreaking, stories?

It’s actually really easy for me because my life is so radically different from those of my characters. I’m fortunate; I live in a beautiful house, I have three healthy children and I have a phenomenal, gorgeous, supportive husband. So, at the end of the day, when I leave my office there is no question in my mind about what is real and what is fiction. I think I’m willing to walk on the dark side because I don’t live there.

What can we expect from you next?

The sequel, Off the page, to the young adult novel that my daughter Sammy and I wrote together, Between the Lines. The next adult book you’ll see from me is about racism in the United States.

 

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