Chicago Author Spotlight: Jen Lancaster
By Betsy Mikel in Arts & Entertainment on May 5, 2011 6:00PM
If You Were Here was released earlier this week.
If You Were Here is a result of that exploration. In the just-published novel, Lancaster tells the story of two new homeowners with a “fixer upper” on their hands. In Lancaster’s own words: “It's about toilets raining from the ceiling. It's about a spite-fueled campaign to bring down a local gang member and Stephenie Meyer. It's about forty-five dollar light bulbs and turf wars over ornamental cabbages and why HGTV causes smart people to make terrible choices. It's about how one fictional teenager with a brush-cut and a birthday cake completely alters everyone's life and bank account. It's about vaguely homicidal and occasionally naked Polish grandmothers.”
Lancaster just kicked off her book tour, and she’ll be in reading in Chicago this weekend. She kindly answered our questions and spoke about her transition from personal writing to fiction, being funny, and what she learned from being an unemployed author.
Chicagoist: Why did you decide it was time to move from essays and memoirs onto writing a novel?
Jen Lancaster: I’ve been interested in writing fiction for a while now and I’ve spent the last few years kicking around ideas. I’m always looking for ways to push myself as a writer, which is one of the reasons I started writing a column for Tribune Media Services last year.
However, the real impetus was pure pragmatism. When my husband and I started looking to buy our first home, we couldn’t find anything nearly as nice as our rental in our budget. So it occurred to me that if I expanded the scope of what I wrote, I could live in a better neighborhood. I already had the ideas and the desire, but it wasn’t until I had a need that the whole fiction thing happened. I eventually want to write Young Adult novels and screenplays, so maybe when I need a new roof, that’ll happen, too.
C: You admit there’s a fine blurring between fact and fiction in this book. How was writing your first novel different than writing your memoirs, and how was it the same?
JL: Memoirs must be true if for no reason other than to avoid Oprah getting mad at you. Because I was in the position of writing real stories about my life, I’d find myself in silly or ridiculous situations from which any normal person would extricate themselves. But I’d stay put, thinking, “Once I’m out of this awful/awkward/annoying circumstance, this will be such a funny chapter.”
With fiction I’ve found I can just make stuff up and I don’t have to live through anything miserable. Do you know how liberating that is after five memoirs? While I was writing about Mia and Mac’s home renovations going horribly awry in If You Were Here, we had guys in and out of the new house doing a great job on all sorts of things, like hanging new lighting fixtures, removing wallpaper, and stringing CAT5 cabling. In this case, I was very happy to leave the drama on the page.
C: There is always humor in your writing. How do you manage to be funny with coming off as sounding like you’re trying to be funny? Especially when you’re writing about stuff that tends to be very heavy.
JL: Humor has always been my defense mechanism. The way I see it, if I can eventually find some levity in a situation, no matter how sad or desperate, I can get over it. I remember when Fletch and I were at our lowest point. We were both out of work - we’d had our car repossessed and we were facing eviction. The only thing that got us through was thinking, “Someday we’re going to look back on this and laugh.” Of course, my other thought was, “Someday I’m going to find a way to make this misery pay off.” So really, my formula is a blend of humor and pragmatism.
C: You felt the strain of unemployment long before it was the cool thing to do. What advice do you have for out-of-work writers?
JL:Use your writing as a release. Put every single thing you’re feeling on to the page and don’t be afraid to share your story, no matter how raw. If I hadn’t started documenting my unemployment stories online, I’d never have had literary agents read my work and tell me I was onto something. The small act of reaching out changed the direction of my entire life.
You have lots of Facebook fans and Twitter followers and all that jazz. You must be pretty good at this social media stuff! What do you gain from your online audience that you wouldn’t have if they didn’t exist?
JL: Fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve always been a ham. I know this about myself and made peace with it long ago. I firmly believe writers should write for themselves, and yet I’ve always had an eye towards an audience larger than myself. The thing is, I’ve met so many of my fans and they really are people I’d want in my life regardless of my writing. My fans are fascinating. I’ve always been someone who observes the world around me, so I’m perpetually captivated by seeing a little slice of someone else’s reality. That’s why I’ve been a voracious reader all my life, too.
The bottom line is I thrive on being connected, so when I interact on Twitter or Facebook, it’s sincere. I could easily outsource the social media portion of what I do to others, but I choose not to because I genuinely enjoy it. And I think my readers understand that.