-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
In this inspirational essay J.A. Jance explains how she struggled to become a writer but that the experience helped her become the writer she is because 'one of the wonderful things about being a writer is that everything–even the bad stuff–is usable!
As a second-grader in Mrs. Spangler’s Greenway School class,
I was introduced to Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series. I read the first
one and was hooked and knew, from that moment on, that I wanted to be a
writer.
The third child in a large family, I was four years younger
than my next older sister and four years older then the next younger sibling.
Being both too young and too old left me alone in a crowd and helped
turn me into an introspective reader and a top student. When I graduated
from Bisbee High School in 1962, I received an academic scholarship that made
me the first person in my family to attend a four year college. I
graduated in 1966 with a degree in English and Secondary Education. In
1970 I received my M. Ed. in Library Science. I taught high school
English at Tucson’s Pueblo High School for two years and was a K-12
librarian at Indian Oasis School District in Sells, Arizona for five years.
My ambitions to become a writer were frustrated in college and
later, first because the professor who taught creative writing at the
University of Arizona in those days thought girls "ought to be teachers
or nurses" rather than writers. After he refused me admission to
the program, I did the next best thing: I married a man who was allowed in the
program that was closed to me. My first husband imitated Faulkner and
Hemingway primarily by drinking too much and writing too little. Despite
the fact that he was allowed in the creative writing program, he never had
anything published either prior to or after his death from chronic alcoholism
at age forty-two. That didn’t keep him from telling me, however, that
there would be only one writer in our family, and he was it.
My husband made that statement in 1968 after I had received a
favorable letter from an editor in New York who was interested in publishing a
children’s story I had written. Because I was a newly wed wife who was
interested in staying married, I put my writing ambitions on hold. Other
than writing poetry in the dark of night when my husband was asleep, I did nothing more about writing fiction until eleven years
later when I was a single, divorced mother with two children and no child
support as well as a full time job selling life insurance. My first
three books were written between four a.m. and seven a.m.. At seven, I
would wake my children and send them off to school. After that, I would
get myself ready to go sell life insurance.
I started writing in the middle of March of 1982. The
first book I wrote, a slightly fictionalized version of a series of murders
that happened in Tucson in 1970, was never published by anyone. For one
thing, it was twelve hundred pages long. Since I was never allowed in
the creative writing classes, no one had ever told me there were some things I
needed to leave out. For another, the editors who turned it down said
that the parts that were real were totally unbelievable, and the parts that
were fiction were fine. My agent finally sat me down and told me that
she thought I was a better writer of fiction than I was of non-fiction. Why,
she suggested, didn’t I try my hand at a novel?
The result of that conversation was the first Detective
Beaumont book, Until Proven Guilty. Since 1985 when that was
published, there have been fourteen more Beau books. My work also
includes eight Joanna Brady books set in southeastern Arizona where I grew up.
In addition there are two thrillers, Hour of the Hunter and Kiss
of the Bees that reflect what I learned during the years when I was
teaching on the Tohono O’Odham reservation west of Tucson, Arizona.
The week before Until Proven Guilty was published, I did a
poetry reading of After the Fire at a widowed retreat sponsored by a group
called WICS (Widowed Information Consultation Services) of King County. By
June of 1985, it was five years after my divorce in 1980 and two years after
my former husband’s death. I went to the retreat feeling as though I
hadn’t quite had my ticket punched and didn’t deserve to be there. After
all, the other people there were all still married when their spouses died.
I was divorced. At the retreat I met a man whose wife had died of
breast cancer two years to the day and within a matter of minutes of the time
my husband died. We struck up a conversation based on that coincidence.
Six months later, to the dismay of our five children, we told the kids
they weren’t the Brady Bunch, but they'd do, and we got married. We
now have four new in-laws as well as three grandchildren.
When my second husband and I first married, he supported all
of us–his kids and mine as well as the two of us. It was a long time
before my income from writing was anything more than fun money–the Improbable
Cause trip to Walt Disney World; the Minor in Possession memorial
powder room; the Payment in Kind memorial hot tub. Seven years
ago, however, the worm turned. My husband was able to retire at age 54
and take up golf and oil painting.
One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that
everything–even the bad stuff–is usable. The eighteen years I spent
while married to an alcoholic have helped shape the experience and character
of Detective J. P. Beaumont. My experiences as a single parent have gone
into the background for Joanna Brady–including her first tentative steps
toward a new life after the devastation of losing her husband in Desert
Heat. And then there’s the evil creative writing professor in Hour
of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees, but that’s another story.
Another wonderful part of being a writer is hearing from fans.
I learned on the reservation that the ancient, sacred charge of the
storyteller is to beguile the time. I’m thrilled when I hear that
someone has used my books to get through some particularly difficult illness
either as a patient or as they sit on the sidelines while someone they love is
terribly ill. It gratifies me to know that by immersing themselves in my
stories, people are able to set their own lives aside and live and walk in
someone else’s shoes. It tells me I’m doing a good job at the best
job in the world.
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Harlan Coben was born and raised in New Jersey. After graduating from Amherst College as political science major, he worked in the travel industry. He now lives in New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Exit Wounds
Try:
No Second Chance
by Harlan Coben
Peter de Jonge has coauthored three New York Times bestsellers with James Patterson: Beach Road, The Beach House, and Miracle on the 17th Green. He has been a reporter for the Associated Press and a contributing writer for ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Exit Wounds
Try:
The Beach House
by Peter de Jonge
We recommend 6 similar authors
 (1).gif)
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
