Joanna Fitzpatrick: On Writing

Inspiration has the power to shut off that critical inner voice that resides in our heads no matter how many books we successfully publish or how many awards we achieve. Mute that voice and the Muses will rush in.

My earliest listeners inspired me to become a storyteller. I was a ten-year-old in a summer camp when I wrote my first story and shared it with the other Brownies circled around an evening campfire. I loved the effect it had on my wide-eyed friends, their eyes aglow, their ears taking in every word. But I particularly loved the effect it had on me. I am naturally shy and listen more than I talk, but when I am a storyteller I slip into another persona where I am unrestrained and therefore my imagination goes wild. It was also my first lesson in revision that has stuck with me. I don’t know about you, but I love revision!

In repeating my first story, I found ways to make it more suspenseful, more exciting for my listeners. I’d add specific gory details so I could scare them even more. Though the ending remained the same: A massive hand crept inside an open window and throttled the unsuspecting girl’s neck.

I grew up in the fast lane and by the time I was twenty-seven I was divorced, a single mom, and in need of a  job.  I didn’t write again for years, but I never stopped reading. When I turned fifty, I had the opportunity to take up  #1 on my bucket list, which was to complete my education. I had dropped out of school when I was eighteen. I enrolled at Purchase College in New York to study literature. 

Speaking of inspiration. Oh la la! What better way to be inspired than sitting in a classroom and hearing professors lecture on authors and their stories. Entire semesters were spent discussing and reading Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen and other literary geniuses. That was when I discovered what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I applied to the Masters writing program at Sarah Lawrence College and almost went mad waiting for their response. My critical inner voice had a heyday: “You’re too old to be a writer.” “You don’t have any talent.” “They’ll never accept you into their program.”

When the letter finally arrived, I tore open the envelope as if my life depended on what was inside. I read it again and again in disbelief. It wasn’t until I was driving my son to a soccer match when I pulled over the car, jumped out, and screamed to the world, “I did it. I’m going to be a writer!” 

I was instructed by my professors to write what you know, so I wrote about myself. But after I got out all my angst in my memoir thesis, I returned to my first love, fiction, and looked for inspiration. 

Here’s a few places I found it:

Writers. When I start a new project, I read other writers for inspiration. They are my best friends. They abide in my writing studio. They live on my bookshelves. And they are always ready to give me a word of encouragement when I hold them in my hands. Especially when I hit a rough patch.

Dogs. When I was writing The Artist Colony, I so wanted a dog curled up by my feet. I’d grown up caring for dogs, but because of my current itinerant life style, I’ve been without one for too long. So when I was writing my first draft, I conjured up an adorable, four-legged Jack Russell as my partner sleuth and named him Albert. But now that the book is published and Albert lives between its covers and not with me, he’ll inspire me to write a new story and put him in it.

Film soundtracks.  I have a massive collection of film soundtracks that inspire me when I’m writing. Right now I’m listening to Adam Cook’s “Genius” soundtrack. His  beautiful compositions cancel that pesky inner voice that enjoys telling me I don’t know what I’m doing. Tells me to go out and get a ‘real’ job. 

My husband. He is a chronic cancer patient but also a musician who makes music. It is his life blood. Years ago, when I thought he was going to die, I wrote my way out of depression and fear by reading widows’ stories, such as Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow’s Story, and then wrote The Drummer’s Widow. As Stephen King so brilliantly wrote in his valuable book On Writing: “Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

My characters. I was inspired to write my historical bio-novel, Katherine Mansfield, because of her.  Though she was chronically ill with tuberculosis, it never prevented her from writing. If anything it kept her alive. She wanted to write novels, but her illnesses interrupted her too often, so she wrote exquisite short stories. And when I brought her back to life through her journals and letters, she inspired me to be a writer in spite of it all. 

Dark moods.  I don’t know about you but whenever I’m not writing, I become an awful person to be around. But I know if I open my notebook and start writing down new ideas for my next project, I will feel a surge of inspiration and the dance begins again. 

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JOANNA FITZPATRICK was raised in Hollywood. She started her writing habit by applying her orange fountain pen and a wild imagination to screenplays, which led her early on to produce the film White Lilacs and Pink Champagne. Accepted at Sarah Lawrence College, she wrote her MFA thesis Sha La La: Live for Today about her life as a rock ’n’ roll star’s wife. Her more recent work includes two novels, Katherine Mansfield, Bronze Winner of the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) in Historical Fiction, and The Drummer’s Widow. The Artist Colony is her third book. Presently, FitzPatrick divides her time between a cottage by the sea in Pacific Grove, California and a hameau in rural southern France where she begins all her book projects. Find her online here:

Author website: www.joannafitzpatrick.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/JoannaFitzPatrickauthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fitzpatrick_jo

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joannafitzpatrick.author/

 

THE ARTIST COLONY

July 1924. Sarah Cunningham, a young Modernist painter, arrives in Carmel-by-the-Sea from Paris to bury her older sister, Ada Belle. En route, she is shocked to learn that Ada Belle’s suspicious death is a suicide. But why kill herself? Her plein air paintings were famous and her upcoming exhibition of portraitures would bring her even wider recognition.

Sarah puts her own artistic career on hold and, trailed by Ada Belle’s devoted dog, Albert, becomes a secret sleuth, a task made harder by the misogyny and racism she discovers in this seemingly idyllic locale.

Part mystery, part historical fiction, this engrossing novel celebrates the artistic talents of early women painters, the deep bonds of sisterhood, the muse that is beautiful scenery, and the determination of one young woman to discover the truth, to protect an artistic legacy, and to give her sister the farewell she deserves.

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Category: On Writing