Ask the Author: Jennifer Vandever
Answered Questions (3)
Jennifer Vandever
Be patient and gentle with yourself. Be prepared to spend whole days or weeks (or months or years) thinking you’re crazy and wasting your time. Writing a novel is, when you think about it, a pretty bizarre way to spend your time but if you’re committed it can actually be pleasurable. People have this vision of tortured novelists – which I guess is sometimes the case – but the thing that’s rarely reported is that swimming inside a novel that’s still just inside your head and your computer or a pad of paper can sometimes be really, deeply pleasurable
Jennifer Vandever
I started writing American Tango in 2008, inspired, like my main character by an article in the New York Times travel section about Americans living in Argentina. I remember thinking how cool it would be to just pick up and move to Buenos Aires, envisioning some romantic, idealized version of my life ... and then very quickly thinking, "nope, I'm in my thirties now, it's too late for that kind of thing."
I began thinking about how we start closing doors to experiences based on age or fears and beliefs about who we are and what's "allowed." A character started to form in my mind: a rocky marriage, unfulfilled dreams, fertility issues, aging parents -- a lot of the things we confront as we enter the age of "grown-up" problems. I was also visiting my hometown of Portland a lot (caregiving for my own aging parents) and finding rich material for satire (pre-Portlandia). A novel about the challenges and comedy of modern life took shape.
I began thinking about how we start closing doors to experiences based on age or fears and beliefs about who we are and what's "allowed." A character started to form in my mind: a rocky marriage, unfulfilled dreams, fertility issues, aging parents -- a lot of the things we confront as we enter the age of "grown-up" problems. I was also visiting my hometown of Portland a lot (caregiving for my own aging parents) and finding rich material for satire (pre-Portlandia). A novel about the challenges and comedy of modern life took shape.
Jennifer Vandever
Hi Diane,
Ha! No, not bitchy -- I find this site a bit confounding as an author too. We'll see...
Ha! No, not bitchy -- I find this site a bit confounding as an author too. We'll see...
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