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Author
Interviews Interview: Lisa
Jewell Already
with her debut novel, Ralph's Party, an
enormous success (selling over 200,000
copies in the UK and becoming the top
selling debut novel of 1999), we caught up
with Lisa Jewell to discuss her background
and future - plus news of her forthcoming
second novel,
Thirtynothing. Fiction-Net:
What were your career ambitions before
writing Ralph's Party? Did you see writing
as 'this or nothing' or did you have a
back-up career in mind? Lisa
Jewell: I didn't have any 'career
ambitions'. After ten years of faffing
about in various jobs and industries I
thought I'd finally found my niche when I
became a secretary by accident.
Perversely, I quite liked all the typing
and paperwork and organisation - and I
liked being indispensable. I did a
part-time course in Creative Writing at
the beginning of 1996, but more for
something to do on a Monday night than for
any sort of career plan. I thought I would
be a secretary for a few years, get
married, have kids, and then, maybe after
the kids had left home, I would sit down
and write a book. An unexpected redundancy
forced me to reconsider and when a
journalist friend offered to take me out
for dinner to my favourite restaurant if I
wrote the first three chapters of a novel,
I thought it would be a fun project for a
few weeks, before I resumed my job search.
Now
that I am a writer, however, it really is
a case of writing or nothing and I
certainly have no back-up career in mind.
If I can't do this until the Alzheimers
sets in then I have no idea what I'll do.
"I
still find it hard to believe that I've
been published" Fiction-Net:
All writers must allow themselves a
certain level of confidence but, prior to
publication, how confident were you that
Ralph's Party would reach
publication? Lisa
Jewell: Er - not at all?! I truly only
thought of it as a 'project'. I would read
stories about other young authors in the
press, about these huge advances and
two-book deals but I never thought for a
second that I would be one of them. I
thought, in my wildest dreams, that maybe
I would be able to sell Ralph's Party for
a couple of thousand, just enough to pay
off my debts, but that it would take me a
few years and countless rejection letters.
I still find it hard to believe that I've
been published. It's totally
surreal. Fiction-Net:
What were the biggest problems you faced
in the route to agent
acceptance/publication and how do you feel
you overcame them? Lisa
Jewell: I was very lucky and didn't
really encounter any problems. I
originally sent the first three chapters
out to ten agents and received nine
rejection letters, but I'd been expecting
that so I didn't view these as a 'problem'
as such - just an inevitability. Once I'd
found my agent, everything went like
clockwork - she knew exactly who she
wanted to publish my manuscript and she
got me the deal within a couple of
weeks. Fiction-Net:
Were the leading three characters in
Ralph's Party based on real
people? Lisa
Jewell: The flatmates Smith and Ralph
were originally inspired by my boyfriend
and his brother. When I first met them
they were living together and I based alot
of the characters' domestic behaviour on
what I observed with them - tussles with
the remote control, staring blankly at the
telly until midnight, bitching about women
etc. Also, my boyfriend was successful and
settled and his brother was creative and
struggling. But the comparison ended after
the first couple of chapters and they
became people in their own rights. Jem has
some of my interests but was not based on
me - I deliberately made her as physically
dissimilar to myself as I could to deflect
the temptation to make her 'me' as I would
have found that quite restrictive. Funnily
enough though, I found Jem to be the least
interesting of the six characters and the
least enjoyable to write about - she used
to annoy me because she was so
perfect! Fiction-Net:
Authors usually criticise their own work
more than anyone else. Looking back at
Ralph's Party, how do you see it
now? Lisa
Jewell: I see it as very much a 'first
novel' I see it as having weak
characterisation (although readers seem
divided on this - a lot of readers thought
the characters more believable and
three-dimensional than
average). I
see some of the dialogue as embarrassingly
childish and some of the narrative as
deeply immature. If I were given a chance
to do it again, I would probably change
nearly everything about it. However, I've
had so many incredibly heartfelt e-mails
and letters from readers who've been moved
by the book or touched by it, that maybe
all that 'first novelist' inexperience
doesn't actually matter. And as a symbol
of my change in fortunes and the amazing
things that have happened to me in the
last two years, I will always have a soft
spot for Ralph. "Nobody
said that writing books was supposed to be
easy" Fiction-Net:
So what's next in the pipeline? Lisa
Jewell: My second novel
'Thirtynothing' is published by Penguin on
7th September (you can read the first
three chapters and the synopsis on my
website (www.lisa-jewell.co.uk)). I am
currently having a nightmare writing my
third novel, 'Whatever Happened to Bee
Bearhorn?' It feels something akin to
pulling teeth right now and time just goes
so unbelievably fast. I'm getting married
in July, launching my second novel in
September and then hoping to move house in
the New Year and right now my January
deadline seems to be looming large.
However - nobody said that writing books
was supposed to be easy, so I'll struggle
on and will (hopefully) publish my third
novel in September 2001.
Fiction-Net:
Do you believe that you have found
your style of writing or are you still
experimenting? Lisa
Jewell: If Ralph's Party hadn't been
such a huge success I would probably be
more experimental, right now. As it is,
I'm trying not to mess too much with the
formula. I feel comfortable with it and
people seem to like it. However, I am
definitely looking to improve the quality
of my writing with each book. There are so
many lessons to be learned from the
process of writing a novel - lessons in
characterisation, structure and dialogue,
particularly. My goal is one day to write
a commercial book of a literary standard
and I'll just keep trying 'till I
do. Fiction-Net:
And finally, have you set yourself any
long-term aims? Do you see yourself as a
prolific future author? Lisa
Jewell: This is a strange time to be
an author - never before has there been so
much activity, so many first-time
novelists, so much money and so many new
books being published. I feel very
strongly that in order to achieve
longevity in the face of so much
competition, you need to concentrate on
writing consistently good novels and being
true to yourself. It's too easy to be
side-tracked by other activities and by
all the media hullabaloo that seems to
surround writers these days. My dream is
to write a novel every eighteen months for
the rest of my life. I don't want to write
a screenplay or a TV drama or be on the
television or write a column. I just want
to write books for as long as my
publishers will publish them. |
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