Ask the Author: Jennifer Gilby Roberts
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Jennifer Gilby Roberts
It's a semi-memoir, as my daughter was born at the same age as Jess's. There isn't much fiction about premature birth, so I wanted to help raise awareness.
Jennifer Gilby Roberts
Posted on my blog 29 March 2014
So, Is This About You? Writing From Your Own Experience
One of my beta-readers for Early Daze asked if it was my story. Well, yes and no. It isn’t a memoir, but it certainly draws more on my life than any of my previous works.
Jess’ baby, Samantha, is essentially my daughter. The book follows her progress, with very minor adjustments. The Facebook posts which Jess makes are actually adapted from the ones I wrote at the time. I also had the diary I kept to draw on. A lot of Jess’ thoughts and feelings are ones that I had. It isn’t a book based on research; it’s based on experience.
That said, I didn’t go through everything that Jess did. I didn’t – fortunately – share her struggles to make enough milk for her baby. I was very much a Gwen in that respect. However, I wanted to include that part of story because I know so many women go through that. Breastfeeding may be natural, but it’s difficult for so many mothers. Pumping full-time is not natural and so is harder still. Also, I know that being good at making milk comforted me for my “failure” (and it does feel like that) to carry my baby to term. It must be doubly painful when milk production is slow too.
Jess’ relationships with her fiancé, friends and family are fictional. My husband supported me all the way. Likewise, although I went through a lot of the things Jess did, we’re not the same person. She has plenty of attitudes I don’t share. I always like to give my characters significant differences from me, if only to remind myself that we’re separate!
But I did share her feelings of being cut off from the “real world”. You can’t help it. When you’re staying at the hospital, your life revolves around the NICU. The flats Jess stays in were based on the ones I stayed in. So was the hospital, although my daughter actually transferred to a different one once she moved into Special Care. For the purposes of the story, I needed them both in the same location. The doctors and nurses, however, are fictional.
In Early Daze, Jess develops a crush on one of the other parents. You may think this is a strange thing to happen at such an emotional time, but it isn’t. It’s actually common, for exactly that reason. You’ve just given birth, so your hormones are all mixed up. You’re suffering sleep deprivation, because you’re pumping round the clock. You’ve suffered a big shock from giving birth early and you’re cut off from your normal life. The result of all this is that you go a bit bonkers. While your brain struggles to sort itself out, you think and feel all sorts of strange things. The fact is: human beings are odd creatures.
They say you should write what you know. The trouble with writing about a hard experience you’ve been through is that it’s very hard to step back from your work. When you write, you can do it for yourself. When you publish, you have to be able to put emotional distance between you and your work, because otherwise you will be devastated when people don’t like it. And not everyone will – that’s just inevitable. That’s why I tried to make Jess a lot different from me, to make sure I could think of it as her story rather than mine.
So, Is This About You? Writing From Your Own Experience
One of my beta-readers for Early Daze asked if it was my story. Well, yes and no. It isn’t a memoir, but it certainly draws more on my life than any of my previous works.
Jess’ baby, Samantha, is essentially my daughter. The book follows her progress, with very minor adjustments. The Facebook posts which Jess makes are actually adapted from the ones I wrote at the time. I also had the diary I kept to draw on. A lot of Jess’ thoughts and feelings are ones that I had. It isn’t a book based on research; it’s based on experience.
That said, I didn’t go through everything that Jess did. I didn’t – fortunately – share her struggles to make enough milk for her baby. I was very much a Gwen in that respect. However, I wanted to include that part of story because I know so many women go through that. Breastfeeding may be natural, but it’s difficult for so many mothers. Pumping full-time is not natural and so is harder still. Also, I know that being good at making milk comforted me for my “failure” (and it does feel like that) to carry my baby to term. It must be doubly painful when milk production is slow too.
Jess’ relationships with her fiancé, friends and family are fictional. My husband supported me all the way. Likewise, although I went through a lot of the things Jess did, we’re not the same person. She has plenty of attitudes I don’t share. I always like to give my characters significant differences from me, if only to remind myself that we’re separate!
But I did share her feelings of being cut off from the “real world”. You can’t help it. When you’re staying at the hospital, your life revolves around the NICU. The flats Jess stays in were based on the ones I stayed in. So was the hospital, although my daughter actually transferred to a different one once she moved into Special Care. For the purposes of the story, I needed them both in the same location. The doctors and nurses, however, are fictional.
In Early Daze, Jess develops a crush on one of the other parents. You may think this is a strange thing to happen at such an emotional time, but it isn’t. It’s actually common, for exactly that reason. You’ve just given birth, so your hormones are all mixed up. You’re suffering sleep deprivation, because you’re pumping round the clock. You’ve suffered a big shock from giving birth early and you’re cut off from your normal life. The result of all this is that you go a bit bonkers. While your brain struggles to sort itself out, you think and feel all sorts of strange things. The fact is: human beings are odd creatures.
They say you should write what you know. The trouble with writing about a hard experience you’ve been through is that it’s very hard to step back from your work. When you write, you can do it for yourself. When you publish, you have to be able to put emotional distance between you and your work, because otherwise you will be devastated when people don’t like it. And not everyone will – that’s just inevitable. That’s why I tried to make Jess a lot different from me, to make sure I could think of it as her story rather than mine.
Jennifer Gilby Roberts
The Dr Pepper Prophecies was inspired by a combination of Can You Keep a Secret? and Jane Austen’s Emma. If you read the three books together, that would probably be obvious. I’d decided to write a novel and those were my influences at the time. Can You Keep a Secret? I bought for fun, while Emma was on the reading list for a writing course I was taking that summer.
I was in Melbourne for the Australian Open the year I wrote After Wimbledon and was very into tennis at the time. I’d also been struggling with where to go next in my life, so it was a kind of therapy (I had to cut a lot of my ramblings from the first draft!) and the two things came together in the novel.
I was in Melbourne for the Australian Open the year I wrote After Wimbledon and was very into tennis at the time. I’d also been struggling with where to go next in my life, so it was a kind of therapy (I had to cut a lot of my ramblings from the first draft!) and the two things came together in the novel.
Jennifer Gilby Roberts
1.Don’t start editing until you’ve completed the first draft, otherwise you’ll never finish it.
2.Always proofread on paper and get someone else to look at it as well.
3.At least in the beginning, write what you want to write and don’t think about what will sell. There’s an audience out there for everything.
2.Always proofread on paper and get someone else to look at it as well.
3.At least in the beginning, write what you want to write and don’t think about what will sell. There’s an audience out there for everything.
Jennifer Gilby Roberts
See my work in progress blog post 15 July 2014 http://jennifergilbyroberts.wordpress...
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