Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Jessica Stilling, who has authored ten novels, five literary novels under the pen name Jessica Stilling and five young adult fantasy novels under the pen name JM Stephen. 

Her novels include The Weary God of Ancient Travelers, Betwixt and Between, The Beekeeper’s Daughter and the soon to be published Between Before and After.

She moved to New York City to attend The New School University and stayed in said city for fifteen years. 

Jessica is a graduate of the City University of New York’s MFA program. She has worked at The Frances Goldin Literary Agency and the Global City Press, a small press out of City College. 

She has taught Creative Writing at The State University of New York, City College, Queens College, The Gotham Writers Workshop and The New School. 

Her work has appeared in many publications including Ms. Magazine, Bust Magazine, The Writer Magazine, Wasifiri and The Warwick Review. 

She currently lives in rural Vermont with her two children, a dog, a cat, and something like 20 chickens, 7 of which are roosters.

Norm: Good day Jessica and thanks for taking part in our interview.

How did you get started in writing? What keeps you going?

Jessica: It’s funny because I remember a time when I couldn’t write (because I was a child and didn’t know how yet) but I also remember ALWAYS feeling like a writer.

From the time I was incredibly young I loved reading stories and telling stories on the nursery school playground.

When I was in the third grade, I entered The Young Author’s Competition through my school and wrote a story about a horse.

That was the first time I wrote something I truly fell in love with. The act of writing itself keeps me going.

I love diving into new worlds, it’s like living twenty, thirty lifetimes in a single one. I’ve become very busy over the years, but the love of writing is what keeps me going. 

Norm: What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing? 

Jessica: Character development is by far the most important aspect of any good story.

If your characters don’t make sense, aren’t relatable or likable (at least in some ways), then a reader isn’t going to buy into your story.

We hang out with people we get along with, and we also want to read about people we like. All aspects of a story, from plot to setting to narrative voice, come most strongly from great character development. 

Norm: What did you find most useful in learning to write?  What was least useful or most destructive?  

Jessica: The most useful: I hate to be cliché, but it’s writing every day. It’s making time for your work and showing up for it at least once a day.

That’s the best thing you can do for your writing. The rest will come.

The second most useful thing, and these two go hand in hand, is to finish. You can’t edit and make something better, or make it great, if you haven’t written it. So, finish what you start. 

The least helpful: The wrong workshop, the wrong editor, the wrong mentor can be a disaster for a writer.

I say these are the least helpful because the right workshop, the right editor and the right mentor are so important to a writer’s development and when a writer doesn’t mesh with a workshop or editor or mentor it can be devastating.

Most of the time, when a new writer encounters one of these, they give up. I’ve been in workshops that tore me down in unconstructive ways and I’ve seen students in various workshops I’ve attended leave and never come back after an unconstructive workshop.

An unconstructive workshop is not a workshop that points out a work’s flaws, that’s the job of a workshop because it helps an author make their work better, but sometimes, an author is torn down unnecessarily, that’s when it’s a problem.

I remember when I workshopped a story in my MFA program. I was around twenty-eight at the time and I had a two-year-old son. I wrote a story about a little kid who started playing with his toys as his little brother was in the next room dying.

A twenty-year-old kid, who had probably spent zero time with young children since he was one, looked at me and said so dismissively, “Kids don’t do that.

They don’t play when bad things are happening.” It was the way he thought he knew better, with absolutely zero as a point of reference, that was unconstructive.

He dismissed the scene because of his conception about childhood without understanding the scene at all.

That comment was so bad that the instructor, who rarely said anything during the workshop, stepped in and said, “Actually, I have young kids and that’s exactly what they do.”

When a comment is meant to say something more about the person saying it, than the story, that’s when it’s a problem.

I was a seasoned workshopper at the time and knew to take his comment with a grain of salt, but someone less seasoned may have given up.

The same is true with bad editors who chop up your work. I just edited a woman’s novel that had been butchered, just butchered, by her previous editor and she was so demoralized by it that she has all the kudos in the world for keeping going. 

Norm: How many times in your career have you experienced rejection? How did they shape you? 

Jessica: Constantly, all the time. I still experience rejection.

My first novel was rejected by something like one-hundred agents before a small press picked it up.

Now I have a publisher who is really behind me and my work, but I still experience rejection from reviewers or magazines I pitch. You have to let it roll off you.

If I took it personally, I’d be a very bitter person and if I let it get me down, I wouldn’t be writing now. That old Virginia Woolf quote, “in order to write one must first develop a very thick skin,” is so right on. 

Norm: What does a typical writing day look like for you, from waking to turning in at night, and how does it compare to a conventional 9 to 5 job?  

Jessica: When I take the day to write I wake up early. I have two children, they’re not so young anymore so they can entertain themselves, but just having their energy around can be disruptive. So, I write early in the morning.

Then I’ll usually break for some physical activity. I’ll go back to it in the late morning and write until about noon.

After lunch, I’ll spend some time reading over what I wrote. I usually write fiction in the mornings and more editorial stuff, like book reviews and articles in the afternoon.

I don’t really write at night; I find I’m much too tired by then. I’ve always been a morning person. 

Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two?  Please summarize your writing process.  

Jessica: I believe strongly that the story is some sort of thing, creature, entity, energy, that exists outside of me on some level.

It’s my job to find the story, the truest version of that story.

Much like Michelangelo’s idea that the sculpture exists in the stone, and it is the sculptor’s job to find it and dig it out of the stone, I believe the best version of the story exists and it’s my job to chisel away until I find it.

That is to say, I get an idea, and they usually fall into my head, out of thin air, just…poof! Then I start to craft it. I do think logically during the prewriting process. I consider character traits and what plot holes I might encounter. As I write though, I’ve learned to let the story take over.

The characters will speak to you, the story will tell you what it is, you just have to listen. However, when I go back to edit and rewrite, that’s when the logic takes over once again. 

For instance, when I was working on my current novel, Between Before and After, I wrote a scene where a fourteen-year-old boy is sitting in a public park along the Seine in Paris with a girl he really likes.

He wants to impress her so he brings a picnic lunch with a bottle of wine (the story takes place in France in the ‘90s, so I figured a kid could do that then).

In my first draft, this fourteen-year-old kid, who has never opened a corked bottle of wine in his life, opens it with a flourish, as if it’s nothing.

When I went back to edit that scene, I realized that there is no way this kid would be able use a corkscrew that well on the first try.

So, I rewrote the scene where the kid struggles and struggles until some kindly stranger comes and opens the bottle for him. Much more realistic. 

Norm: Are you a plot or character writer? 

Jessica: I tell my creative writing students that there are plot driven stories and character driven stories. Plot driven stories are more related to genre fiction and so when I do my young adult fantasy writing, it is definitely more plot driven.

I like my characters and I do develop them in my fantasy work, but the plot drives the story. However, when I write literary fiction, those stories are almost completely character driven.

Those stories rely on the human condition to connect with the reader. The entire story boils down to who your character is and how they navigate this crazy, human world. 

Norm: How much real-life do you put into your fiction? Is there much “you” in there? 

Jessica: I believe even the most outlandish writing holds a kernel of its author inside it and most main characters are at least a composite of their author.

Even when I try to push it away, a little of myself always sneaks in, from a character who puts entirely too much sugar in her coffee, to a character who longs to remember a five-year-old child chasing pigeons in Paris. 

And yes, everyone I know who I put in my fiction ALWAYS recognizes themselves, even if I’ve just used a kernel. Sometimes I think I’m safe, because I just used a few of an old friend’s personality traits, maybe a little of their childhood, but they

ALWAYS see themselves. No one has ever been offended by it, however. 

Norm: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?  

Jessica: Writing itself has always come naturally to me, but as I grow older, I really want to put more and more of myself into my work, not just my personality traits or even my disposition, but I would like to explore those deep-down dark crevices that I’ve honestly been too scared to explore. I’m working on that…it’s been a process.

One step forward, two steps back sometimes. 

Norm: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?  

Jessica: When I first started writing novels, I didn’t realize how little control you have over your story, but also how amazing it is just how little control you have.

You have to listen to your story; you have to follow it. The times when writing has been the most awe-inspiring is when a character does something I didn’t think they’d do. I love that and it always surprises me.  

Norm:  How did you become involved with the subject or theme of Between Before and After?

Jessica: Between Before and After follows a man, Sebastian Foster, who is, in essence, trying to relive his childhood through making art.

The theme of nostalgia is very, very strong here. I was at the Orleans Airport, about to leave Paris, when I started thinking back to that time I’d spent in the city with my children.

I remember thinking I did not want them to grow up and that’s when the idea for the novel came to me. I crafted a lot of Sebastian’s character on the plane back to New York. 

Norm: Could you tell us a little about the novel.

Jessica: Between Before and After follows Indie film director Sebastian Foster, son of the famous author Regina Foster, as he embarks on a project to turn his mother’s award-winning novels into films.

As he works on his third film in the project, a biographical novel that takes place in Paris and deals with the traumatic death of Sebastian’s five-year-old sister, the project and aspects of Sebastian’s personal and private life start to break down.

Sebastian is confronted with a man from his past who holds the purse strings as far as funding for his films is concerned.

He also learns that his mother has more secrets than he realized and as he dives deeper into this project, he learns that there was so much more to his sister’s tragic death than he realized.

As the past starts to unravel before him, Sebastian must confront his issues with his mother and his desperate need to recreate a past that may not have been as idyllic as he remembered. 

Norm: What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?

Jessica: My goal was to fully explore the theme of nostalgia, that dull ache we all feel for our past.

I also wanted to show that not only can we never, really get our past back, but the past isn’t always what it seemed to be.

By end of the Book, Sebastian Foster definitely sees the signs of this, and it is that knowledge that is the most heartbreaking for him. A few of my beta readers said the end made them cry and that was my goal. 

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and Between Before and After?

Jessica: You can find out more about the book on my author WEBSITE, or my Publisher’s Website.

Norm: What is next for Jessica Stilling?

Jessica: The Emergence of Expanding Light, Book IV of my Hugo nominated young adult series, The Pan Chronicles, will be coming out in February, you can also find the other books in the series on my and my publisher’s website and other places, like Amazon.

I’m working on Book II of my second young adult series, The Seidr Sagas. That book is a hot mess right now, but I’ll edit it down.

I’m also working on a new literary novel called Beatrice and Persephone about two women in two different timelines struggling with loss and the ability to create.

The book takes some experimental turns. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that one of my characters ends up romantically linked to the Ocean (yes, THE Ocean). 

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what would you like to say to writers who are reading this interview and wondering if they can keep creating, if they are good enough, if their voices and visions matter enough to share? 

Jessica: All voices matter, of course they do. As corny as it sounds you just have to keep at it.

Keep writing. Keep sending your work out. Keep getting rejected.

But doing only that, and only doing what you always do, might not be enough and so stepping out of your comfort zone, going to readings, participating in your literary community, reaching out to other writers, taking some classes, joining a writing group, might be in order.

If you find just plugging along isn’t doing it for you, do something else, something more.

There are so many resources for writers, but you’ll also encounter roadblocks and the trick is to not give up. 

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your endeavors