Janet Fitch
Janet Fitch
Janet Fitch is most famously known as the author of the Oprah's Book Club novel White Oleander, which became a film in 2002. She is a graduate of Reed College, located in Portland, Oregon...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth9 November 1955
CountryUnited States of America
music poetry rhythms
I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language.
writing poetry trying
The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.
mean poet said
Just because a poet said something didn’t mean it was true, only that it sounded good.
heart water poetry
Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.
sending
I kept sending out stories and getting rejected.
fond los turns
I'm particularly fond of the Mulholland Fountain, at Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard, when it turns colors at night.
I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.
depths naked public
It's your flaws, not your strengths, that go down in the depths of your books. You're exposed, like dreaming you're naked in a public building.
anytime materials people showing work
Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don't want people to know.
time
Dostoevsky was my literary idol for a long time.
los
Crime novelists do really well with Los Angeles.
authors describing emotional establish events mood notes tone
Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character.
life realized spend
I started writing when I was 21. I was going to become an historian. And then I realized there was more to the world than just the past. I didn't want to spend my life in the library.
associate carol editor joyce send
I send all my short fiction to 'Ontario Review' because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she's fantastic.