Ask the Author: Janet Fitch
Answered Questions (65)
Janet Fitch
What a great question! Poets would be--Sexton, Eliot, Jeffers, the Beats... Dylan Thomas. Haiku, probably Rumi, Yeats. Coleridge. Shakespeare, certainly. Shelley and Byron. HD. Oscar Wilde. Writers would be Virginia Woolf, Anais Nin, Anna Kavan, Mavis Gallant, could be Henry James--that or hate him--Chekhov. Tennessee Williams. Sei Shonagon. Junichiro Tanazaki and Mishima. John Fante, Isherwood, Proust. Albertine Sarrazin, Genet. Francoise Mallet-Joris, Nathalie Sarraute. Marguerite Duras. Many others but this is the flavor of her imagination.
Janet Fitch
Hi Alice! So glad you enjoyed my talk. I do a weekly writing "fireside chat" every Wednesday on my Facebook author page, Writing Wednesdays, and archive them on YouTube, if you want to see more. As to your question, teaching is an outlet to my more critical, intellectual, rational side, while writing expresses my more exploratory, intuitive side. I'm very sociable for a writer, so teaching satisfies that side of my life. I spend 95% of my time writing, 5% teaching. It's a good balance.
Janet Fitch
Hi Alice! I am always writing--if I didn't read while I was writing, I would never read anything! What you read does color your language a little, but I don't think it disturbs the reader, it just adds a little color, a certain scent, that they will experience as part of that chapter or section. I'm not overwhelmed by other people's voices at this point, it's just a little added something in the mix. thanks for the question!
Janet Fitch
Thanks, Carmen! You can't go wrong with either The Revolution of Marina M. or Paint It Black. One is a young poet in the Russian Revolution, the other is the aftermath of a suicide in punk rock Los Angeles. So one has a big canvas, an adventurous young woman in the midst of political upheaval, lots of poetry, the other is a very small canvas, an art model who has lost her beloved boyfriend, very intense. Thanks for asking! Hope you enjoy them both. There is a second Marina book, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral... some people start with that. Wish you good reading!
Janet Fitch
Thanks Michael, glad you enjoyed it. I think Starr was someone who was essentially a kind person, but had been derailed early in life by her beauty and people wanting to exploit it, was looking for some kind of spiritual handrail, but it was so external, it had never reached or healed the wounds she was carrying, She looked to other people and highs--drugs, sex, approval--to make her feel better, and when she slipped, her desperation was very very dangerous to all those around her. She thought she would have Ray and her children, I think. A confrontation with her and Ingrid would look very much like the one between her and Claire. Seduction and destruction. Ed, I think, was just one of those guys who doesn't want to be too bothered by other people's problems. He's married to a really awful woman, and just tries to disappear. Conflict avoidant.
Janet Fitch
Hi Eric! good to hear from you. I had a student who did Birkbeck as well--I think for grad school. Wish you good reading and love to hear what you think of the videos! all best,Janet
Janet Fitch
Hi Edy, my great apologies at not seeing your question until now. Right now, I'm feeling the disappearance of people and places very strongly, and am writing a book in which I get to recapture times and places I experienced personally--the 1970s in Los Angeles--and an era I never saw but experienced through famly stories--Los Angeles (Hollywood) in the 1930s.
maybe it was because of lockdown, the past loomed very large. Thanks for asking!
maybe it was because of lockdown, the past loomed very large. Thanks for asking!
Janet Fitch
Hi Cara! I just saw this... sorry it's taken. me so long. My fondness for various books changes over time and mood... Developmentally, I started with Poe and the sad horse stories of Marguerite Henry, classics like Sword in the Stone... then found Doestoyevsky, crime and Punishment. My favorite for many years, later supplanted by The Brothers Karamazov. Anais Nin's diaries affected me deeply as a young person--a woman speaking honestly, and poetically, about her own life. Faulkner--The Sound and the Fury. Joyce Carol Oates' short stories. Joan Didion's Play it As it Lays. Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. Marguerite Duras' The Lover. Graham Greene--the Quiet American, the Power and the Glory, The Comedians. John Le Carre, The Perfect Spy. I think if there was any work that I wish I'd written it would be the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell--if I have to limit it to the book, I'd say the first one of the Quartet, Justine. It's moving, lyrical, intense, and creates an unforgettable world.
Janet Fitch
Hi Theresa! Sorry I let you sit with this question so long! (Forgot about this function on GR!) Much of the externals are things I'd experienced/known about--the Los Angeles of the punk days, though I wasn't in the scene, just went to shows and so on. Internally--lets just say our books are a perfect blueprint of our psychic life, but only as our own therapists would understand how. I'm more Michael than Josie--a lot of it was about wrestling with perfectionism as an artist. I was in a pretty dark place when I wrote it, had lost a book after White Oleander. It seemed possible--a three person story and one of them was dead. thanks for asking! Glad you liked it!
Janet Fitch
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Janet Fitch
I have--was an exchange student in Leningrad in the '70s, traveled in the region, and returned to do research for The Revolution of Marina M. and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral in 2007 and 2009, most of it centering in St. Petersburg where I had a fellowship--the books are largely set in revolutionary Petrograd--but also visiting Moscow and the towns of the Golden Ring, Tikhvin, Novgorod... Did not make it as far as Udmurtia--still so much more to see!
Janet Fitch
Thanks, Ann! After working on the two deep historical books, I am definitely craving writing something contemporary, maybe Noir even, but I won't say I won't return to Marina sometime. If you want a peek into Marina's future in America, this project started with a short story set in Los Angeles in 1923, published twice in Black Clock (literary journal)--issue 13 and 18 (a best of), a story called "Room 721." Thanks for the encouragement, and for the review!
Janet Fitch
Hi Liesl!
I"m just seeing this letter, after all this time! Since White Oleander, I have written three other books--Paint It Black, in 2007, now a film made by Amber Tamblyn you can see on Netflix, The Revolution of Marina M. in 2017 and soon, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, publishing on July 2, 2019. All are different but they have a decided family relationship. I like an intense story, sensual language, very dramatic, romantic, with strong and interesting women characters.
Hope you give them a try!
Other books I could recommend: The Lover by Marguerite Duras, Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, The Quiet American by Graham Greene, Justine by Lawrence Durrell.
I"m just seeing this letter, after all this time! Since White Oleander, I have written three other books--Paint It Black, in 2007, now a film made by Amber Tamblyn you can see on Netflix, The Revolution of Marina M. in 2017 and soon, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, publishing on July 2, 2019. All are different but they have a decided family relationship. I like an intense story, sensual language, very dramatic, romantic, with strong and interesting women characters.
Hope you give them a try!
Other books I could recommend: The Lover by Marguerite Duras, Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, The Quiet American by Graham Greene, Justine by Lawrence Durrell.
Janet Fitch
Hi DAwn--sorry if its taken me so long to get back to you--I was finishing a book myself! "Trouble committing to finishing a book" tells me you're partway there, and you're having trouble staying engaged. I say, don't try to write the next thing that happens. Get really quiet and think, what can I see very clearly. And then write that. And then something else you can see very clearly. Don't worry how it fits together until later.
"Trouble making time to write" asks the question--what is writing compared to the other things you have to do? If its a priority--make sure you spend at least 15 minutes a day on it. It's easier to keep a patient on life support than trying to resurrect the dead on an occasional weekend or on vacation. Just dust it off, clean up some words, but do it every day.
If you have trouble "committing to completing a book"--try writing shorter things! Short stories, or even short shorts, that you know you can finish in a few hours, or a few weeks.
Trying to get published--spent 10 years in those trenches before I ever published anything. Because my desire to be published in those years was very strong, but my craft was not its equal. I had to learn to write, keep learning, keep getting better, keep studying, keep fighting, making beautiful sentences, telling stories in a more compelling and interesting way. Trying to get published means not only persevering in sending things out and tolerating the rejection, but also trying to get better, all the time.
good luck and thanks for writing!
Janet
"Trouble making time to write" asks the question--what is writing compared to the other things you have to do? If its a priority--make sure you spend at least 15 minutes a day on it. It's easier to keep a patient on life support than trying to resurrect the dead on an occasional weekend or on vacation. Just dust it off, clean up some words, but do it every day.
If you have trouble "committing to completing a book"--try writing shorter things! Short stories, or even short shorts, that you know you can finish in a few hours, or a few weeks.
Trying to get published--spent 10 years in those trenches before I ever published anything. Because my desire to be published in those years was very strong, but my craft was not its equal. I had to learn to write, keep learning, keep getting better, keep studying, keep fighting, making beautiful sentences, telling stories in a more compelling and interesting way. Trying to get published means not only persevering in sending things out and tolerating the rejection, but also trying to get better, all the time.
good luck and thanks for writing!
Janet
Janet Fitch
Stories are like rivers--they begin in many places. There's a trickle over here that's then joined up with that trickle, and another, and then you have a creek. More join and you have a stream, and finally a big river. The original story was just a trickle. A two page short-short story set on a rooftop in the wind during the Santa Anas. Just an image of a woman's white hair in the wind, and the white moon, and the white oleanders blooming.
Janet Fitch
By this time, it should be pretty clear that I am crazy about Russia and Russian literature, and have written two books set during the Russian Revolution, THE REVOLUTION OF MARINA M. published November 7, 2017 and the sequel, CHIMES OF A LOST CATHEDRAL, to be published on July 2, 2019, the story of a young poet, a passionate young woman coming of age at that turbulent point in history. I like the drama of Russia, the seriousness and soulfulness of its people, the scope of its history and the sweep and intensity of its literature. Russia was my great love as a young person--I took Russian as my language in high school, read Russia's great novels and later, its poets... CHIMES even more than the first book deals with Russian literature, especially the Silver Age poets who are active characters in the novel--Gorky, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Gumilev, Blok.
Janet Fitch
Hi Katy!
My apologies at the tardiness of this response. Completing the new book has had me underwater until recently. Thank you for your kind comments on White Oleander. I had a backstory section of Ingrid's but it never fit, anywhere I put it it, it killed the story. But her parents were from Sweden, the mother a very dramatic stage actress, the father the mentally unstable son of a Swedish shipbuilding family. They were sent to America during WWII, the family basically paid him to stay away. They ended up buying a dairy farm in Oregon, their little utopia. Which the father ran like his own little kingdom. The mother was a drunk who drowned in the cow pond when Ingrid was 13. She has a sister, a housewife in florida. Ingrid was the father's favorite, and there was some kind of sexual inappropriateness with the father which was never disclosed.
My apologies at the tardiness of this response. Completing the new book has had me underwater until recently. Thank you for your kind comments on White Oleander. I had a backstory section of Ingrid's but it never fit, anywhere I put it it, it killed the story. But her parents were from Sweden, the mother a very dramatic stage actress, the father the mentally unstable son of a Swedish shipbuilding family. They were sent to America during WWII, the family basically paid him to stay away. They ended up buying a dairy farm in Oregon, their little utopia. Which the father ran like his own little kingdom. The mother was a drunk who drowned in the cow pond when Ingrid was 13. She has a sister, a housewife in florida. Ingrid was the father's favorite, and there was some kind of sexual inappropriateness with the father which was never disclosed.
Janet Fitch
Hi Jackie!
so sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you! The new book has consumed me. Congratulations on choosing to become foster parents, that's awesome! I guess what I hope a prospective foster parent would learn from my book is to be aware of the life the child has already lived, how scared they are, how much their experience needs to be respected. how important it is to understand how vulnerable they are, and what they hope for in a foster home, and how they might be skeptical of people's good will--that it's never what you say, it's what you do. How you come through.
My own experience with foster care is second hand--I had two friends when I was growing up, one who went into foster care when her elderly parents died, a care taking aunt died, and her brother, who she lived with afterwards, was arrested. The other friend was a foster daughter, a girl I knew in high school. The rest was research.
Hope it's going well!
so sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you! The new book has consumed me. Congratulations on choosing to become foster parents, that's awesome! I guess what I hope a prospective foster parent would learn from my book is to be aware of the life the child has already lived, how scared they are, how much their experience needs to be respected. how important it is to understand how vulnerable they are, and what they hope for in a foster home, and how they might be skeptical of people's good will--that it's never what you say, it's what you do. How you come through.
My own experience with foster care is second hand--I had two friends when I was growing up, one who went into foster care when her elderly parents died, a care taking aunt died, and her brother, who she lived with afterwards, was arrested. The other friend was a foster daughter, a girl I knew in high school. The rest was research.
Hope it's going well!
Janet Fitch
Hi Austin!
Thanks for the kind comments! Yes, to get better--as a reader, as a writer--you have to expose yourself to writing that actively requires your mental participation. I'm a believer in reading up to grade level, or a little beyond. If you're an adult, and want to be a better reader, not to say a better writer, you have to challenge yourself with writers who have challenged themselves!
It's hard to recommend books for people whose reading tastes and experience I don't know. So to start, when we talk about "harder" you would think about what your 'grade level' is. If you have read a lot of serious books, but generally books written in a fairly straightforward way, you might think of trying books written in more interesting, less conventional forms--like Ontaadje's The English Patient, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, David Markson's Reader's Block. If you tend to read popular fiction or young adult, you might look at books that are really 'written'--voice oriented books like Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, Sapphire's Push, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Generally, the language in older popular books is richer and more challenging than their contemporary counterparts. Dickens is incredibly rich--if you haven't read him, then he's a wonderful place to start--Oliver Twist... though my favorite is Bleak House. Very funny. My own lineage masters are Joyce Carol Oates (try Blonde), Joan Didion (Play it As It Lays), William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury, but go ahead and read about it before you read it), Doestoyevsky (Crime and Punishment), Poe short stories.
What is challenging is always relative and individual to every person, so start where you are. Happy to continue this conversation with you!
Thanks for the kind comments! Yes, to get better--as a reader, as a writer--you have to expose yourself to writing that actively requires your mental participation. I'm a believer in reading up to grade level, or a little beyond. If you're an adult, and want to be a better reader, not to say a better writer, you have to challenge yourself with writers who have challenged themselves!
It's hard to recommend books for people whose reading tastes and experience I don't know. So to start, when we talk about "harder" you would think about what your 'grade level' is. If you have read a lot of serious books, but generally books written in a fairly straightforward way, you might think of trying books written in more interesting, less conventional forms--like Ontaadje's The English Patient, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, David Markson's Reader's Block. If you tend to read popular fiction or young adult, you might look at books that are really 'written'--voice oriented books like Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, Sapphire's Push, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Generally, the language in older popular books is richer and more challenging than their contemporary counterparts. Dickens is incredibly rich--if you haven't read him, then he's a wonderful place to start--Oliver Twist... though my favorite is Bleak House. Very funny. My own lineage masters are Joyce Carol Oates (try Blonde), Joan Didion (Play it As It Lays), William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury, but go ahead and read about it before you read it), Doestoyevsky (Crime and Punishment), Poe short stories.
What is challenging is always relative and individual to every person, so start where you are. Happy to continue this conversation with you!
Janet Fitch
I am a pretty gregarious person. I like people, I teach, I live in the world. But there is always a part of me that lives inside my own spirit. I don't think of my self primarily as an intellectual--I see myself as an artist--so my internal world is more emotional and intuitive.
But yes, I can become very focused on that internal world and sometimes find it jarring to have to take care of day to day matters, other people's problems and so on. But people have problems, they need me to be a good friend (and vice versa...)
There is no permanent solution, it's all a dance. On any day, who knows what the balance will be. People do communicate with me--a lot. For me the challenge is to keep it on a level that nourishes us both, that conversations explore something more than what the new app is. or complaining about family or current events on a superficial level. Can we talk about something that brings out the best in us both, our smarts, our most interesting selves? Can we surprise each other? Can we not play tapes? So that the inner feeds the outer and the outer the inner.
there's a wonderful book which used to be quite popular, called Games People Play. Part of its approach was that too often, we don't have real conversations, we enact rituals which never really get through to who we are and what we really have to offer. These are called "games"--like "Aint it Awful"... things we do instead of creating a fresh moment with each other. That's something I try to do. I also found the book Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead super inspiring, to strive to genuine exchange of informed views that we're all capable of doing--not waste each other's time when we're together.
But yes, I can become very focused on that internal world and sometimes find it jarring to have to take care of day to day matters, other people's problems and so on. But people have problems, they need me to be a good friend (and vice versa...)
There is no permanent solution, it's all a dance. On any day, who knows what the balance will be. People do communicate with me--a lot. For me the challenge is to keep it on a level that nourishes us both, that conversations explore something more than what the new app is. or complaining about family or current events on a superficial level. Can we talk about something that brings out the best in us both, our smarts, our most interesting selves? Can we surprise each other? Can we not play tapes? So that the inner feeds the outer and the outer the inner.
there's a wonderful book which used to be quite popular, called Games People Play. Part of its approach was that too often, we don't have real conversations, we enact rituals which never really get through to who we are and what we really have to offer. These are called "games"--like "Aint it Awful"... things we do instead of creating a fresh moment with each other. That's something I try to do. I also found the book Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead super inspiring, to strive to genuine exchange of informed views that we're all capable of doing--not waste each other's time when we're together.
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I’m so sorry I didn’t see your reply earlier, I just came across it now. I truly appreciate how generous and detailed your reading list is. ...more
Aug 04, 2025 09:12AM · flag