Last week I was lucky enough to see a reading with Audrey Niffenegger of her newest novel Her Fearful Symmetry.  Afterwords she answered questions from people.  I meant to do a little write up about it last week but as things seem to be going this year, I just now got time.

          First, I would like to start by saying Niffenegger is an absolutely talented writer.  If you have read either books (I unfortunately have only read The Time Traveler’s Wife as this point but the other book is in my to read soon pile) you can easily see that fact.  With TTTW I was very fascinated with her ability to give the perspective of two completely different characters and to weave them together.  Beyond that, the concept of the story is very unique.  I enjoyed that she took something straight out of a science fiction novel and turned it into a completely different genre.

          After the reading a lot of people asked questions about her writing process and getting published.  Those were the two things I was most curious about as well.  As a writer, a lot of  her answers gave me more confidence in my own work.  For example, someone asked her about if she will ever write sequels.  Her answer, which cracked me up, was that if you see her writing The Time Traveler’s Daughter it means she made very bad investments.  She also went on to say when she is writing novels, the characters are constantly in her head.  They are talking, interacting, so on.  When the story is done they just go away.  My characters are for sure in my head all the time.  Especially during the first draft, I would hear things happening with them and could not wait to sit down and write it out.  Now they have faded out a lot since I’m refining things but they are still there.  Guess I’m not going crazy.

          The other very interesting thing she talked about was the process of actually getting published.  She basically sent letters out to everyone possible, got rejected a lot, then had one publisher and one agent respond.  First off, the fact that a book as amazing as TTTW got rejected so much will be something to help keep my head high if I get rejected a lot too.  It happens.  It takes time to get the perfect fit for your book.   The other thing it helped me understand was that it was okay to go about things your own way.  I have always been an against the grain type of person.  When someone told me I couldn’t play a hard song on guitar without learning chords, I did it just fine.  When I go to concerts where everyone is in black tees and jeans it seems like, I rock a pink dress. That is just who I am.  Thinking about getting published makes me nervous because if you read online or in books, it makes it sound like you have to do everything perfectly and by the book or it isn’t going to happen.  Well Niffenegger proved that wrong.  I’m not saying that I will follow what she did (although I’m also not saying I wouldn’t) but it is good to know that I can do it my way and that might work out.

          Overall, I am extremely happy that I went to see Niffenegger talk.  In person, she is brillant but in a quirky way that made me really look up to her.  I look forward to see what is coming next from her.