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I recently talked about 'Paint It Black' by Janet Fitch on WABC-NY, as one of my picks for the best fall reads. I read this article in the Boston Globe today (there's a quote from it below) and it reminded me to talk about the novel here. Please take a moment to read the article, because I think it reminds us that Being A Successful Novelist is not always a bowl of cherries -- but that someone who can actually write a 'White Oleander' and then follow through to follow up with a book as rich and real as 'Paint It Black' really is a successful novelist.

"It's every fiction writer's dream to get the phone call: "Hello? Can you hold for Oprah Winfrey?" But after the dream-come-true comes the problem of waking up."

Listen to my interview with Janet Fitch here.

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• #2 Comment from katepeppr
  11/6/06 10:23 AM | Permalink

  Thanks for pointing out the Boston Globe article.  I'm a novelist myself and know well the vicissitudes of the business.  You're struggling with a new book when your latest comes out, and people start congratulating you, and you don't know why because your revision seems doomed and you feel like a failure.  You wonder when people will figure out you're a fraud, even though you're not a fraud...you're an artist, and an artist's job is to search, stumble, take risks.   I also teach writing and implore my students to tread gently on each other's egos, because the writer who produces a bomb one day may write the best thing ever the following week...unless they've succumbed to the whispers and shouts of discouragement that haunt every writer at some point in the process.  I hope Janet Finch's second novel is as wonderful as her first; but if it doesn't please you, give her third one a chance.  Creating excellent fiction is a process and no one can do it every single time.
  
  --Kate Pepper
  ONE COLD NIGHT, Penguin/NAL
• #1 Comment from justaname4me2
  11/6/06 9:59 AM | Permalink

  I've been waiting, very very patiently over the years for Janet Finch to write her second novel. I heard a whisper that she had done so, and promtly went to Amazon last week to purchase it. I was surprised and confused by several reader reviews that had been left there. The majority voiced displeasure, a dark novel, etc. I didn't buy it online, instead opting to wait until I get back to a book store so I could thumb through it.
  
  Now, I'm motivated again to read it, thank you~~
  Rebecca
  http://journals.aol.com/justaname4me2/InTheShadowOfTheIris/