Jennifer Mathieu is an English teacher and the author of two YA novels, The Truth About Alice and Devoted. She was recently recognized as the 2015 Children’s Book Choice Teen Choice debut author. Jennifer’s compassionate, yet powerful voice makes her stories all the more compelling. Jennifer was kind enough to share what she learned from writing Devoted, the research process for her latest project, and her thoughts on why so many adults enjoy reading YA fiction. To learn more about Jennifer and her work, please visit www.jennifermathieu.com.
Devoted is the story of a young woman named Rachel who leaves her religious community in search of her soul’s calling. Has the character of Rachel taught you anything about your own life and your own callings?
What a lovely question. Personally, for me it has reaffirmed for me the importance of listening to your heart and following it as best you can – not just on matters of faith but life in general. Of course, that’s often easier said than done. We have needs – like paying the rent – and outside influences – like what our parents or friends or partners expect from us – and we have to balance all of that with what makes us happy, fulfilled, and productive. Right now, I feel like I am in a really good place and I think and hope it’s because I listened to my heart over the years. I was a journalism major in college and when I worked as a journalist, my heart was telling me, “This is not for you. You aren’t happy.” It was terrifying to give up on a career that I thought I’d have my whole life, but the first day I spent in the classroom as an English teacher and the first night I sat down at my computer and tried to write young adult fiction, I felt it on a soul-level. This is what I’m good at! Keep doing this! I’ve had similar feelings about my marriage and becoming a mom. I hope Rachel’s story inspires readers – especially younger readers who are just starting out – to listen to their hearts as best as they can.
Devoted features a protagonist who is a strong, yet compassionate woman. The story could have gone in a much different direction without the presence of compassion. What caused you to lean in favor of this response?
Well, I think most people I know – even people who were raised in abusive homes – want to feel love and compassion for their parents and families. Even if the feelings are complicated or the families are totally dysfunctional. I don’t think it would have been realistic for Rachel to hate her family. Despite all of her misgivings and troubles early in the novel, she did care about them and loved them, especially her little sister Ruth. And her family loves her even though they don’t agree with anything Rachel does. I think it creates more believable characters and much more interesting tension to explore to have Rachel still feel compassion for her family even after she knows she can no longer continue to live and worship as they do. I like the gray areas and the complicated parts of human relationships. In my first novel THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE, I try to paint bullies with compassion because most bullies I know have been hurt in some way. I just try to create real people in my books.
Will you briefly describe your writing process, including the incubation period for an idea and the time you take to research a book’s subject matter? I know that you are an English teacher by day. Do you find it’s easier to write during the summer when school isn’t in session?
It’s funny, because it’s summer vacation as I type this, and oddly, I am finding it harder to get writing done now than in the school year. I’m the mother of a young son who’s home with me during the summers, and the days are full of pool visits and visiting friends and big summer projects like cleaning out closets and so on. The school year feels much more scheduled for me, for obvious reasons, and I’m able to stick to my dedicated schedule of school time, family time, and then writing time (from about 8:30 until 10:00 pm or so, give or take). I honestly think I might become less productive if I wrote full-time. Teaching keeps me on a schedule! As for my process, I do love the term “incubation period”! I usually let an idea marinate in my mind for a month or two – sometimes longer depending on deadlines – and then I start researching. I love research and can spend way too much time on that if I’m not careful. For my third book, I spent months reading about trauma bonds, Stockholm Syndrome and the like, and I kept finding just one more therapist or expert to speak to! Honestly, the writing is the fastest for me. The drafting usually happens quickly. I can finish a 60,000 to 70,000 word novel in about three months just writing at night and then with some time on the weekend. Of course that is just the first draft, so it’s nowhere near perfect!
Are you a plotter or a pantser? What advice do you have for writers of a similar ilk?
I would say I am something of a hybrid. I tend to have a loose structure or series of events (“Ethan and Caroline hang out” “Ethan visits his doctor” “Caroline quits her job”) but I don’t really know what those scenes are going to look like and sometimes they change as I’m writing them. Or I end up moving scenes around. I work sort of in chunks, I guess, moving the chunks around as need be. Sometimes I will skip ahead and write a scene I’m excited about first, but I usually write in order. Typically, I know the end of the novel before I begin, and it’s my truth north as I write the book. I don’t really have any advice for writers on this other than there are a million ways to approach writing and as long as your method is working for you, don’t worry!
Why do you think so many adults enjoy reading YA novels?
I think because adolescence is a time where everything is so heightened and so important. Actually, it is So Important, capital S, capital I. Everything is new – and that can be terrifying or wonderful, depending on what it is! As adults, we can sometimes fall into the humdrum rhythm of life – it can feel like a carousel of grocery store visits and oil changes and doctor’s appointments. But teenagers approach life with such intensity. When we read YA we’re reminded of those feelings, and I think it’s not only a source of nostalgia, but reading YA can help adults appreciate life a bit more, wake up a bit more and notice. Really notice. Reading YA can be a way to connect with teenagers in your life as well, and it can be a useful way to reflect and connect with your own teenage experiences and on how they shaped the adult version of who you are. I’d like to take this time to say that if you want to make me madder than anything, suggest to me that adults shouldn’t read YA. Adults who shame other adults for reading YA are some of my least favorite people on the planet. Actually, anyone who shames anyone for reading anything makes me so furious. 42% of college graduates never read another book again after graduating from college. Think about that. If we create a culture of shaming readers, that number isn’t going to get any smaller. The irony is that most adults I know who read YA are voracious readers of every category and genre, myself included. I read YA, obviously, but I’m currently reading THE GOLDFINCH and I subscribe to The New Yorker. Reading begets more reading.
What’s your best memory of an interaction with a fan?
I was at a book festival in Texas and, speaking of adult readers, an adult woman came up to me and asked me to sign her copy of THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE. In that novel, a young woman is humiliated and ostracized by her small Texas town after rumors flourish about her sexual behavior. Students dedicate a bathroom stall to writing horrible graffiti about her. Anyway, this woman approached me and said, “I was a girl on the bathroom stall wall,” and she continued to tell me that she really deserved it because she had stolen another girl’s boyfriend. I told her that no woman deserves to be humiliated in such a way, no matter what she’s done. She made a joke of it at first but I looked her right in the eye and told her she hadn’t deserved it. I think she was looking for some sort of validation or something from me, and I was glad to be able to offer it in some small way. It was emotional for me and I think for her as well.
Do you have any other fiction projects currently in the works that you’d like to discuss?
I’m revising my third novel for Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan, the aforementioned book about trauma bonds and Stockholm Syndrome. I still don’t have a title and I really need to come up with one! In the book, a teenage boy named Ethan is released from his kidnapper after being held for four years and he finds a starts an unlikely friendship with a teenage girl named Caroline, who is connected to the crime. It’s not a romance, but it’s about guilt, secrets, hope, and recovery – and about finding that deep, soul-saving friendship in a place where you least expected it. It’s out in the fall of 2016. I’ve just started drafting a fourth book but it’s too early to talk about it – but I can tell you that I’m incredibly excited about it!
Thank you, Jennifer!