Q&A with Gayle Forman
Gayle Forman is the Young Adult author of the #1 New York Times bestseller IF I STAY, and an executive producer and writer on the hit 2014 film version. She is also the author of its New York Times bestselling sequel WHERE SHE WENT, as well as JUST ONE DAY, JUST ONE YEAR, and the companion e-novella JUST ONE NIGHT. I WAS HERE was released in January 2015 and hit the New York Times bestseller list soon after. LEAVE ME (Algonquin, 2016) is her debut adult novel.
Gayle started her career as a journalist, and her first job was with Seventeen Magazine. She has been featured in many national publications including, The Nation, Elle Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine and The New York Times. She won the 2009 NAIBA Book of the Year Awards and is a 2010 Indie Choice Honor Award winner for IF I STAY.
Gayle lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughters.
We could not be more pleased to welcome you, Gayle, to WomenWritersWomen[‘s]Books.
Let’s start from the beginning, Gayle, your beginning.
Where did you grow up? How do you think that shaped who you have become?
I grew up in a fairly normal family, in that I had two parents, two siblings, a house in the suburbs. But my parents have always been very into travel; when I was little they took me and my siblings on a six-week trip to Israel, Romania (during the height of Communism) and Switzerland. When I was 16, my father practically booted me out the door to be an exchange student in England. I came back from that year abroad with an English accent and a desire to travel. Bless my parents because when I announced I would not be going college because I was attending “The University Of Life,” their response was to buy me a backpack.
I traveled for three years before going to school and have traveled throughout my life. I think spending time outside of your comfort zone—be it by travel or other means—makes you acutely aware that things are seen very differently in different cultures, which expands empathy and a comfort with ambiguity. At the same time, traveling widely has shown me that some things are universal. Being able to see the world from multiple view points, to understand that in spite of enormous differences, most people want similar things, is rather helpful training as a novelist.
What is your favorite television shows?
Oh, so many. This really is a golden age. Right now, my current obsessions are HBO’s The Night Of and Netflix’s Stranger Things, both of which I’ve been inhaling. I love a lot of HBO stuff—Togetherness, Silicon Valley, Veep and Girls. Favorite all-time shows include Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, this weird Australian show called Please Like Me, and though it’s only been on one season, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I also just stared watching Black-ish, and it’s great.
Bands?
My kids are at the age that they control the music most of the time—lately Hamilton soundtrack and Beyoncé all the time—so I had to check my phone to remember what I like. These days, along with Hamilton and Beyoncé (both of which I love even If I’m a little sick of them) I’ve been listening to a lot of older stuff: Bowie, Prince, The Kinks, along with more melodic indie stuff, Courtney Barnett, The Rural Alberta Project, The Lumineers, etc.
Best meal you prepare?
During summer, I cook whatever the farmer gives me so there have been lots of ideal meals lately. Mushroom risotto, caramelized onion salad, avocado, corn, cilantro relish, linguine tossed with garlic and fresh tomatoes, and a peach praline pie. The pie is bought. I can’t make pie. Also, now I’m hungry.
What do your girls think about having a writer for a mom? How do you balance home and work?
My youngest one has always been my most dedicated publicist. When she was four, she would go up to bookstore clerks and announce, “My mother’s an author; would you like her to sign your books?” (Pan to me, hiding in the shelves, equal parts embarrassed and proud.)
My older one has always been a tougher sell. When she was about six, she pulled out her Diary Of A Wimpy Kid book with its #1 New York Times Bestseller sticker and asked, “Are you a number one bestseller?” And I was like, “Well, I’ve made it to number two.” She was unimpressed, and when I did hit #1, she was very nonchalant about it. She does however like it when I do visits at her school.
As for balance, last year my husband went freelance and we now both work from home and since then, the balance has been better. Before that, I didn’t balance. I struggled not to drown.
How does your husband Nick feel about being the inspiration for Adam, the heartthrob rock star of IF I STAY and WHERE SHE WENT?
He will be very happy to hear that you refer to him as the inspiration for Adam (which he is) as opposed to the inspiration for Leave Me’s Jason (which he is not) (okay, maybe just a little bit). I think he has long since resigned himself to showing up in my work. My first book was a nonfiction travel book that chronicled, in part, our marital strife as we traveled around the world for a year. He said, “That not me; that’s a fictional character based on me.” So that prepared him well for there being actual characters based on him.
Where did the idea come from for your (adorable!) ‘All the Feels’ apparel?
I stole that from the fans. It was how they’d describe my books: “All The Feels,” as in eliciting a lot of emotion. My fans are amazing.
LEAVE ME is about Maribeth Klein, a working mother who’s so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn’t even realize she’s had a heart attack.
Afterward, surprised to discover that her recuperation seems to be an imposition on those who rely on her, Maribeth does the unthinkable: She packs a bag and leaves. Far from the demands of family and career and with the help of liberating new friendships, Maribeth is able to own up to secrets she has been keeping from herself and those she loves. What would you say is the central theme of this novel? What do you hope readers take from it?
There are really two stories going on here. A story, which is pretty universal, of a working mom/default parent who, for a variety of reasons, is unable to get the help she needs. And the story underneath, which is about why she can’t get that help (aside from the fact that our society still operates under the assumption that mothers should be responsible for family and should sacrifice their own needs for everyone else’s).
I suspect some readers will identify—deeply—with Maribeth. Some will hate her for what she does. Some will do both. Maribeth does something shocking. She runs away from her family and in doing so, puts herself first. If anything, I hope readers examine why this is so shocking, and question whether it should it be. Obviously, running away is extreme, but why do we women/mothers have such a hard time with putting ourselves first?
How did the idea and characters for LEAVE ME come to you? Did any of it grow out of personal experience?
A few years ago I was having chest pains and became convinced it was my heart. My mother had bypass surgery at a young age even though she had no risk factors aside from bad genetic luck so this wasn’t completely crazy. While contemplating the surgery, I got scared, then mad. My kids were young. If I had a health crisis, who would take care of them? Of me? That was where the idea came from. But then it wasn’t my heart and the urgency to write the book went away. When the idea re-emerged a few years later, Maribeth came along with it. The original premise remained but the story itself took me in surprising directions.
Your Young Adult work has reached literally millions of readers. NYT bestseller IF I STAY, which was also a feature film starring Chloe Grace Moretz, sold more than two and a half million copies alone. What do you think it about your work that makes it resonate so well with YA readers?
I really don’t know. I think If I Stay really struck a chord somehow. I suppose if I had to guess I’d say it’s because I somehow deliver an emotional experience. Readers often tell me that when they read my novels, they feel as if they were the character. (Warning: I’ve heard people say they got sympathetic chest pains after reading about Maribeth.) When I’m writing a book, I fully identify with a character, sometimes too much. (I had about ten “heart attacks” while revising Leave Me.) I think that I somehow translate/transmit the emotional journey of my characters and that’s why people react so strongly.
In addition to adult and YA novels, you also write personal essays. Do these mediums have different challenges?
They are different ways of trying to tell a truth. Though it’s often easier to tell the truth in fiction when you come at something sideways. I defer to Camus on this one. He said: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” And essays are the truth through which we tell the truth. Or try to.
What do you need to know about your protagonist before you feel her story is ready to be written? How do you get to know her?
I do a presentation to students in which we create a story together. I always bring in a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—partly because teenagers need the cover of candy to volunteer without seeming uncool but also because the candy is symbolic. I explain to the kids how for me, a story begins with a What If? scenario. (What if something catastrophic happened to your family and you had to decide whether to live or die? What if something catastrophic happened to you and your family couldn’t take care of you and you ran away from home?) This is the peanut butter.
But the story doesn’t take off, doesn’t become a tasty peanut butter cup, until the character arrives, often fully-formed, in my head. The character is the chocolate. I put the premise and the character together and I have a peanut butter cup, and a book. This isn’t to say I know the characters completely from the get-go. The process of writing a novel is partly getting to know your main character, and all the other delightful people who show up on the way, but I have a pretty essential sense of who that character is before I start writing.
To what degree do you plan your books before you write them? How long does it take for you to complete one book?
I generally know how the book will begin and how it will end and part of the delightful mystery/alchemy of writing is how the rest fills itself in. There’s a process of discovery as I write, about the characters and inevitably, about myself. I don’t outline but I often have insomnia while drafting so I spend many hours in bed thinking about where my characters will go. It generally takes me about a year to complete a book.
You write with remarkable depth and insight. How does a writer learn to observe at that level?
What a lovely thing to say. Thank you. I think this goes back to the earlier question of why the books resonate. I think I’m an emotional person and a perceptive person. The emotional bit I was just born with—actually, I think everyone is born with it; I just never learned to bury it—and maybe the perceptive bit comes from my years as a journalist where part of the job is watching and listening and trying to understand different experiences and points of view. In any case, people fascinate me. I am constantly guessing at why they do what they do, what motivates them. In real life, I’m probably mostly off-base but in my novels, I get to be right.
What have been the most impactful lessons on your storytelling and writing since you began?
My first book was a nonfiction travel book. It was the least honest book I’ve ever written. Not because I made things up but because I hid from certain emotional truths. The longer I write, the more important I realize that no matter what you’re writing—be it very stylized or conceptual or a more straightforward narrative, nonfiction or fiction—emotional truth is essential. My friend Libba always asks: Is it true enough? That’s become my guidepost in storytelling.
You also do speaking engagements. What are some of your favorite topics?
I don’t have a favorite topic. Sometimes I write speeches based on what’s going on with me personally. Last year I gave a talk called 90 Seconds Of Awkward Silence in which I sat and stared at the audience for 90 seconds before making everyone turn off their cell phones and then trying to sell them on the importance of sitting with discomfort, both as a writer and a human. Other times, I’ll write about what’s happening politically. This year at ALA, the Pulse shooting felt like the elephant in the room so instead of doing a speech about Leave Me, I talked about about how novels create empathy.
My favorite part events is the Q&As because then it becomes more of a conversation with readers. We have a really good time. I’m excited to go out on the road for Leave Me because I am hoping we can have a really good, honest conversation about women, motherhood, the expectation for us to do it all, our inability to ask for and feel entitled to help. I also hope there will be wine because it’s an adult book!
Have you experienced rejection in your career? Does it still happen? Does it get easier?
Yes to all three. Between journalism and fiction and Hollywood, there’s a lot of rejection. And of course it still happens. I think people have this idea that once someone achieves a modicum of success, it’s all roses. But I’ve had my publisher turn down books I want to write. I’ve had lots of projects fall through. I still get told no more often than yes. It does get easier because the older you get the more your perspective changes and you realize that sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. It’s never all of one or the other. Success eases the sting of rejection. Rejection makes success all the sweeter.
What do you when you are stuck with your story? How do you get unstuck?
The shower always works, though I’m not sure it would work if I intentionally showered to get unstuck. But if I’ve been wrestling with something, half the time when I’m in the shower, it comes to me. Sometimes, however, being stuck is a sign of larger issues within a manuscript and then I have to do some forensics and figure out when things started going awry and go back and rework. In one case, (Just One Year) I wound up scrapping everything but the first chapter and rewriting from a blank page. In other cases, I’ve wound up scrapping the entire book. Back to rejection, sometimes I reject myself.
Two Part Question: For readers — Where should readers hang out to interact with authors? For writers — What have you found most effective for reaching readers?
For both of these, it depends on the author. For me, if readers really want an experience, they should come to an event. I hate boring, staid readings (and trust me, I’ve been to a lot of them). I see my events as a chance for us to connect and I strive to send readers home with something beyond a signed book. But that’s me. I know other authors engage with their readers via social media. I tried for a time but it was too much feedback for me and it also siphoned off time for actual writing or being with my family and friends or just staring out a window (see importance of sitting with the silence above). I think for writers, they should do what they feel most comfortable with.
Certain authors like John Green or Maureen Johnson, Margaret Atwood, excel at reaching their fans via social media but I think it’s because they genuinely love this kind of engagement and that’s why they’re so good at it.
Any other advice for writers who are still climbing the publishing mountain?
When I started writing If I Stay, I had no agent, no publisher and very little confidence anyone would ever want to read this dark, nonlinear story I was telling. I saved the original draft on my computer as Why Not? As in this is never going anywhere but I’m so compelled to tell this story so why not do it. I tell that story because it gets to the heart of my advice, which is make it about the work. Not the book deal. Not the career. But about that story that is burning to come out of you that only you can tell. Write that story. Write the hell out of it. Write it until you’ve made it as honest and electric as you can. Then worry about the rest.
And finally…
Favorite Indian dish?
Saag Paneer. Because of the spinach, I can tell myself it’s healthy.
Favorite mode of transportation?
Train.
Foreign languages you’ve learned and since forgotten?
Hebrew, Dutch, Spanish, though the Spanish comes back to me.
Favorite thing about L.A.?
All the little hidden spots, like this bridge and these canals.
Favorite thing about NYC?
The fact that nothing here is shocking.
Thank you, Gayle, so much for hanging out with us. Welcome to the WWWB family! We will be supporting and rooting for you forever more. ☺
Aww, thank you. It’s good to be here. xx
Praise for LEAVE ME –
“Gayle Forman is known for her dreamy but hard-hitting young adult novels, including the best-selling If I Stay. With her first foray into grown-up fiction, Leave Me, she doesn’t shy away from the tough questions in this deep-diving and highly entertaining read. It’s hard not to relate to—and root for—Maribeth even as she does the unthinkable: abandons her children.”
—Family Circle
“Popular teen author Forman’s adult debut examines just what it means to be a working mother—beholden to everyone, seemingly obligated to forget who you really are. Maribeth’s search for her birth mother and the way she settles into her new—albeit temporary—life away from home will strike a chord with readers, especially those who enjoy Jennifer Weiner and Meg Wolitzer.”
—Booklist (starred)
“Absorbing…LEAVE ME deftly explores the domestic struggles of 21st-century bourgeois life. This is an insightful ode to – and cautionary tale for – the overburdened working mother.”
—BookPage
“YA author Forman’s successful foray into adult fiction…With humor and pathos, Forman depicts Maribeth’s complicated situation and her thoroughly satisfying arc, leaving readers feeling as though they’ve really accompanied Maribeth on her journey.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Award-winning teen author Forman’s (I Was Here, 2015, etc.) adult debut nails the frustrations of working motherhood…. An appealing fairy tale for the exhausted and underappreciated.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“At times funny, at times heartbreaking, Leave Me is a promising entrance into adult genres for the already-bestselling author.”
—Foreword Reviews
“How do we reinvent ourselves when we can’t even recognize the body we are in? Can you know where you’re headed if you don’t know where you came from? These are the questions faced by the prickly Maribeth, the complex and fascinating character at the center of Leave Me. In her first novel for adults, Forman reminds the reader that the answer to both questions involves getting to the heart of the matter.”
—Jodi Picoult, author of Leaving Time
“Told with humor and heart, Leave Me reveals that sometimes you have to leave everything you treasure in order to find your way back home. A moving testament to the persistence of love and the healing power of forgiveness.”
—Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow
“Here’s to complicated women and the authors who write them! Whatever the age of her characters, Gayle Forman is a compassionate, gifted observer of women’s lives.”
—Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
LEAVE ME is available –
Amazon Barnes & Noble Powell’s
Other ways to bond with Gayle –
Website (Visit! It’s great!) Facebook Twitter
Interviewed by –
MM Finck
MM Finck is a writer, essayist, and book reviewer. She oversees WWWB’s Interviews and Agents’ Corner segments. Her women’s fiction and is represented by Katie Shea Boutillier of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and the contest chair for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association 2016 Rising Star writing contest for unpublished authors. Her work has appeared in national and regional publications, including skirt! magazine.
When she isn’t editing her novel, #LOVEIN140, you can find her belting out Broadway tunes (off key and with the wrong words), cheering herself hoarse over a soccer match (USWNT!), learning to play piano (truly pitifully), building or fixing household things, and trying to squeeze more than twenty-four hours out of every day. She is active on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Li.st (@MMFinck), and Litsy (@MMF). http://www.mmfinck.com
Category: Interviews
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