Interview

Janet Tashjian talks about her books, how she writes them and how she got started as a writer.

Are you like any of the characters in your books?
While I'm working on a book, I never think the characters have anything to do with me. Then when I finish and read the manuscript over, I discover they do. Trudy's ambition and runaway ideas are familiar qualities; Monica's hyper-analyzing stems from me too. (I also freeze snowballs in the winter to use in July the way her neighbor Darcy does.) Larry and I believe that ordinary people can change the world - in fact it's the main reason why we're here. (We both do yoga too. I do a better full lotus, but his tree pose blows me away.) There's usually a little piece of me in every character I write.

How long does it take you to write a book? How do you write them?
It usually takes me 3-5 months to write a novel, another month to rewrite it. I write both on the computer and in longhand. I like the freedom of writing in a notebook; you can do it anywhere. I edit and revise on the hard copy itself.
(A leftover habit from being a Journalism major.)

Nonfiction when I'm working on a novel. For me, it's difficult to be inside two fictional worlds at the same time. But I ...