Guest Post: Addison Westlake

Please welcome Facebook Jeanie author Addison Westlake to CLP!

JUST LIKE JOYCE

I’m a chick lit writer. My books are filled with young women finding themselves and discovering love with lots of bumps in the road and pratfalls along the way. But back when I was in my early to mid 20s in the middle of dating craziness, bouncing from one hilarious bad date to the next, I wrote serious stuff. I wrote political essays and research papers.

Now that I’m in the next phase of life—happily married with young kiddos—what do I write about? Twenty-something characters fumbling around trying to figure out who they are and whom they’re going to end up with.

It’s got me wondering: do you have to be out of a phase of life to write about it?

I was an English major in college and I remember studying James Joyce. So much of his writing is set in Dublin, all about the Irish in Ireland. But he left Ireland at the age of 22. After his last visit at age 30 he never returned, yet he wrote about it the rest of his life. I recall a writing teacher posing the question—did Joyce have to leave Ireland to write about it?

Now, far be it from me to compare my lighter-than-air comedies to the likes of Ulysses. But maybe the same principal applies? I can certainly see how it works in extremes. If you’re in the middle of solving a murder mystery in real life you probably don’t have time to be writing one.

It makes me wonder, what is the typical profile of a romance or chick lit writer? For me, now that I have some distance from the all-consuming question of Is He The One???—not to mention How Do I Look In These Jeans???—I’m finding it really entertaining to write about that time of life. It still feels fresh enough that I can conjure it up in vivid detail. Yet I have enough emotional distance to really see the humor in mistakes, the hilarity in bad decisions.

For example, back when I was on a first date with a man who never took off his sunglasses inside of a dark restaurant, it didn’t seem that funny. I remember the hour-long meal felt like it lasted a whole day and I prayed I didn’t run into anyone I knew for fear I’d die of embarrassment. Now, I love that I went on that date. I haven’t used that scene in a book yet, but it’s bound to happen.

How about you? When you write, are you drawing on stuff that’s happened recently, in the past, or perhaps you write about things you’ve never experienced at all? How much of what you’re writing about do you need to know first-hand? Is writing best when we’re describing what we’re feeling in the moment, or reflecting back on something in the rear-view mirror? I’m curious, are we all just like Joyce?