Taylor Jenkins Reid is an author and essayist living in Los Angeles. Her new book, Forever, Interrupted, is the first of a two book deal ith Atria/Simon & Schuster.
Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?
I tend to waste time on my
computer the minute I sit down and then once I feel guilty about how late it’s
gotten, I sit down and write until my hands come off or I’ve reached my word
limit. For each book, my word limit is different but it’s typically 4k. Once I
get 4k down, I can waste the rest of my day.
When you are writing, do you use any famous people or people you know
as inspiration?
Not really. Occasionally, I will
think of a famous person as an influence but I try not to ever frame characters
on people I know. Things get too messy that way!
What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?
Oh, this is so hard! There are so
many. I’m going to say Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep
because that was perhaps one of the first female main characters that I
really believed in.
What is your writing process? Do you plan first or dive in? How many
drafts do you do?
I always know how a book starts
and how it ends and the rest of it I make up as I go along. I do as many drafts
as I need to until I am convinced it’s the best it can be. It’s usually so many
I lose count.
What was your journey to being a published author?
I had written a book in 2009 that
got me a literary agent but didn’t sell to a publisher. So when I started
writing another one in 2011, I knew it was a long road ahead of me. Luckily,
through a number of drafts and a lot of querying, the book got to the right
agent at the right time and eventually to the woman who would become my editor.
What do you think is the biggest myth about being a novelist?
I think the biggest myth is that
all you have to do is write books. Writing books is the best part of my job but
it is one part of a very full time job. You are promoting, building social
networks, convincing people to take a chance on your books, and networking all
of the time.
What advice can you give to our readers who want to write a novel of
their own?
All you have to do to write a
novel is to sit down at your computer and start writing a novel and then keep
doing that until the novel is done. It seems much harder than it is. Don’t
worry about writing a bad book. You can always make a bad book better. The
important thing is to sit down and start.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am just finishing up the editing
on my second book for Atria, coming out next summer, After I Do.
Thanks, Taylor!