An Interview With Carolyn Jourdan
Why do you write?
Because I love my little community so much—the culture and the dialect.
Because I wanted to preserve a picture of what Smoky Mountain culture was like before it was overrun, diluted, and homogenized by new people moving to the area and by the effect of the increasingly pervasive presence of national media in our lives.
Because I wanted to preserve a picture of what family medicine was like at its best—before the business people got in charge of health care and when the doctor not only knew his patient well, he knew 4 generations of the patient’s family and all his cousins, too.
To capture the unique view of a community that a doctor’s family is privy to.
To tell what I learned about the difference in performing some grand gesture of “public service” from 500 miles away and doing even a poor job at something humble at ground zero.
To keep from going insane during a stressful time—to order my own thinking about my life.
What is your writing routine?
Most of the book originated on fast food drive-thru napkins and post-its. I got huge stacks of them and then tried to sort them out and transcribe them. I like to write down things people say. I love the things real people really say. That’s almost the only thing that truly interests me. Real people, real lives, real speech. That’s the good stuff.
Often, I had a palmtop on the reception desk and typed what people were saying and doing without them realizing I was doing it.
If I can I write first thing in the morning, 90 minutes or bust, that’s my best time. Most other times are not good for me. I just can’t do it during other times of the day. Some people can write all day or late at night, but I can’t.
If you write a little bit, day after day, little by little, one day you shock yourself by having a book suddenly show up.
How did you find your story?
This book took 19 years of writing and rewriting. It eventually came to be about what was happening to me personally – but for many years I never intended for it to be about me. I wasn’t even in the book as a character for most of the 19 years. But then I took the fact that I got caught up in Daddy’s office up close and personal as a sign from God to get disciplined and serious about doing the book I’d been pecking away at sporadically for so long.
How do you handle the first draft?
Very poorly. It was just little chicken scratches. Teaching myself to write was agonizing. At first the “book” was 8 stories (each 1 page long) and I was soooo proud of that. Then it was a huge collection of funny stories.
After several years I added a couple of stories that weren’t laugh-out-loud funny, but were interesting. Then, finally, after about 15 years, I added the really sad, downright heartbreaking stories. Then the book seemed rounded out and made a kind of sense to me.
I only meant to lighten people’s lives like my idols James Herriott, Bill Cosby, and Bill Bryson. Or lighten people’s lives like the comedians who can make you laugh and cry back-to-back. That’s what I really love more than anything in the world. But then a famous literary press bought the book and that amazed me. I’m still not over that.
I never thought of myself as a “writer.” I was an engineer and then a lawyer. I had hardly any English in college. In hindsight I believe that helped me more than anything—the fact that I never got much ego into the notion of thinking of myself as a “writer.”
I’ve gotten to work with several amazing editors. That is a highly specialized gift—to be able to edit other people’s work effectively (by that I mean provide constructive criticism that doesn’t crush the artist as opposed to attempting to force a writer to meet the editor’s personal writing style which is what bad editors do). I really appreciate a great editor now. They don’t rewrite your stuff. That was a wrong idea I had. I thought you gave your drafts to them and they fixed them. Oh no. They tell you what they think would improve the work and you have to figure out the fix yourself and then do all the work yourself—but if you didn’t, the style wouldn’t match—so it’s got to be done that way, I guess.
Do you have any writing advice?
Finish the book. My oldest friend, we’ve known each other since we met at the University of Tennessee when we were 19, asked me these questions: “How many people do you know who want to write a book? How many people do you know who ever even started a book? How many people do you know who have ever finished a book?
I realized that although I knew many people who said they were going to write a book one day, I didn’t know a single person who’d even started, much less finished a book.
My friend told me that this was a universal phenomenon and that if I finished a book, he would personally certify that it would be published by the sheer fact of the rarity of anyone’s ever finishing one. He bet me a million dollars that sheer momentum would carry any book I completed all the way through the process of getting an agent and getting published if I would simply (1) start and (2) finish a book. Any book. He was right.
You don’t need anything else before these 2 steps have been completed – not an agent, not anything.
The second best bit of advice came from a great documentary film writer I worked with. He’s also a Professor of Shakespeare. Instead of suggesting fixes for my work, he told me to ask myself: “What are you trying to say?” I listened to him and whenever I’d get confused or stuck, I’d ask myself what I was trying to say and then sit still and listen for the answer. It always comes. Sometimes you realize what you were trying to say was so stupid you don’t need to write it down. Other times it gets you to the most meaningful part of the book.
The third thing is: you’ve got to learn to be edited. You’ve gotta learn how to cope with being edited. It’s hard.
Be careful who you show your work to. Some people don’t know squat – not even that they don’t know squat. Be sure the person you show the book to is someone who would be a likely customer for that kind of book. For example, I could never help someone with explicit or violent material, because I never read it and don’t know what is considered “good” in those genres.
You have to be strongly opinionated to write in the first place, then flexible while you’re getting edited, then come back strong in the re-write.
Writers have to learn to be solitary people. If they are out talking to people about their writing, they aren’t writing. When I’m out yakking or shopping I tell myself I’m “collecting material” or “living” but I’m not sure how often I’m just avoiding writing.
There are two clearly defined groups of writers – the ones who talk about it and the ones who do it. I don’t won’t to get over into the wrong category due to laziness.
