Who: Jennifer McMahon

Claim To Fame: Jennifer McMahon is the author of nine novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Winter People, Promise Not to Tell, and Island of Lost Girls, as well as her latest The Invited, which Booklist called “flawlessly compelling and evocative.”

Where To Find Jennifer: Her Website, Amazon, Facebook

Praise For Jennifer: “McMahon’s gift is the deliciously twisty way she subverts all of your expectations, keeping you guessing with wry wit and feverish chills.”  — People Magazine

When and where do you like to write? Are you the same-thing-every-day kind of writer or can you write anytime, anywhere?

I’ve learned to be fairly productive just about anytime anywhere (on airplanes, while the car is getting serviced, while waiting for my daughter at the orthodontist) but I mostly write from home during the day when my daughter is at school. I have a home office, but I’m more often in the living room (that’s where the woodstove is and it’s much toastier in the winter!), or dining room where I have more room to spread my papers and stuff out. I also have a shed in the yard that I write in during warm weather. I love my writing shed because it’s just separate enough from the house to not be tempted by distractions like the piles of dishes that need to be done, laundry that needs to be folded, dinner that needs to get started. When the writing isn’t flowing, it’s easy to find things that feel like they need to be done. Sometimes if I’m feeling super distracted or unfocused, I pack up my laptop and head to the library or a café in town to write. A change of scene makes all the difference!

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits before you sit down to write?

I start off every day with a to-do list. I actually use a bullet journal to help me stay organized with both writing and life tasks.  I’m a big fan of planning out what I have to do, and making little boxes I can check off—so satisfying! I’ll write down things like “Rough out chapter 3” or “Get 2,000 words in” or “Brainstorm ways to fix XYZ problem”. Oh, and I make coffee. Coffee is an absolute essential! Can’t start work without it.

Have you ever experienced a prolonged creative rut or a spell of writer’s block? How did you get through them?

Nothing really prolonged, but I do get stuck. I’ve learned lots of tips and tricks for getting myself unstuck over the years. I’ve always got several projects going at once — the book I’m putting most of my focus on that will (more than likely) be the next book out, and several back burner projects. If I’ve truly hit the wall with my main book, I’ll pull up one of the others to work on for a while. Often the time away gives me new insight and I’m able to solve the problem with the main story when I dive back in. Other things I do when I’m stuck: go for a walk, brainstorm with index cards, shut down my computer and write in my journal, draw, read poetry, have a beer, go see a movie.

Getting stuck is part of the process for me. So is feeling discouraged. It never fails that when I’m about halfway through the process of writing a book, I convince myself that it’s complete crap and I should just give up. I get grumpy and sulky and full of self-loathing. My partner and daughter are used to this by now, and are really good at gently telling me to get over it and get myself back to work.

Deciding on an idea to pursue writing about can be the most challenging aspect for a writer. How do you generate and capture ideas? And how do you come to the point of ‘this is something I want to write about’?

Ideas are all around us. I think once you start capturing them, more come your way – it’s kind of like opening a faucet and just letting them flow. I write everything down in one of my notebooks or on index cards – all ideas, big and little. I get ideas from my dreams, things I see out in the world, conversations with friends, things I hear on the radio. Sometimes an idea just comes to me and I’ve learned that if I don’t write it down, it’ll be gone. Some of those ideas I may never use. But some are the springboards for big stories. How do I know when I’ve hit on one of those? It’s a feeling I get – this kind of sixth sense writing tingle.  It hits me like a shot of adrenalin. I get all ramped up and excited. The idea is all I can think about, all I want to think about. I think the key to getting those good ideas, the ones that stand out, is to constantly be generating tons of ideas, even crappy ones.

I actually have an idea box – an old cigar box I decorated with images and words. I put all my favorite ideas into it – things scrawled on index cards or typed up on the computer. Ideas for stories, characters, settings, names I want to use. When I’m stuck or unsure what might be next, I open up that box and usually find inspiration. It’s like a magic writing cauldron!

Could you talk about your index card system? How it started, how it works, any details you’re willing to share.

I use index cards for so many things! I have stacks of them all over my house, in the car, in coat pockets and in bags. I use them for capturing ideas, for brainstorming (I start with a stack of cards, put one idea on a card and just keep going until the ideas stop coming), for general notes to myself as I’m working (things like PUT IN LOTS OF RED IMAGERY), and for structuring stories.

Here’s my process in a nutshell: I don’t do much planning or outlining. I write a sparse, incredibly messy first draft. Once that’s done, I print it, then lay it all out, chapter by chapter, over the floor of my house. Then I walk over and around it, study it, start moving things around. I take out chapters. I move chapters from one place to another. I break chapters up or combine them. I fill in holes with pieces of paper with roughed out details of scenes that need to be added in. I color code each chapter by timeline and/or point of view. It’s kind of like doing a giant collage. Once I’m done with this and have a structure I’m happy with, I get out my index cards. I make one card for each chapter and just write down the bare bones details of what needs to happen. When I’m done, I’ve got a stack of cards (again color-coded by point of view and/or timeline) that is now a rough outline that I keep by my desk and use as I revise.

I’ve been doing it this way since I wrote my first novel, Promise Not to Tell. In Promise, I had a present-day storyline and a past storyline. In my original draft, it was chronological, with the past all together at the beginning of the book. It didn’t feel right. So I printed the whole thing out and laid it out all over my floor. Once I did that, it became very clear to me that I needed to go back and forth through time, chapter by chapter. I’ve been laying my books out on the floor ever since!

What does a successful writing day mean for you? And how do you finish out a day of writing? Do you have a process, or is it just that you know you’ve hit a natural stopping point?

A successful writing day means I’ve accomplished whatever goals I set up for myself at the beginning of the day. I get to check off the boxes on my to-do list! I usually try to be wrapped up with work by the time my daughter gets out of school so I can focus on mom and home duties – getting her to dance class, helping with homework, figuring out dinner. But if I’m on a roll (or on a tight deadline!) I’ll keep going and write in the late afternoon and evening. Sometimes I end up bringing my laptop to bed with me because things are flowing and I don’t want to stop. I always try to stop at a point where I know what my main goal for the next day will be. Sometimes I even write that down in the place I leave off. Like I’ll end a scene and write: “NEXT SCENE: Helen has to go to the old mill and bring back bricks” just so I’ll have a starting point for the next morning.

What books or writers have most influenced the way you think and the way you write?

I came to fiction from the world of poetry and I think reading and writing poetry greatly influenced the way I write fiction. It taught me about language, description, atmosphere, metaphor and how to take leaps and make connections. When I’m stuck in fiction now, I’ll read some of the poets I love. Some of my favorites: Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Ai. Some of the fiction writers who have inspired me most: Shirley Jackson (my absolute favorite!!), Patricia Highsmith, Harper Lee and Stephen King. Reading Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces had a huge influence on the way I think about stories and their structure – concepts I go back to again and again when I’m structuring my own books.

What is your advice to aspiring writers?

My number one piece of advice is this: write the story you most want to read! My first three novel attempts were not that great. I was writing what I thought other people expected of me — books that were more quiet and literary. Then, before sitting down to work on novel number four, I asked myself, “What’s the book I most want to read?” and the answer came back loud and clear: a ghost story. So I wrote my ghost story, which became my first published novel, Promise Not to Tell.

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