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
father book two
My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers. Every two weeks, he'd take me to our local branch library and pull books off the shelf for me, stacking them up in my arms - 'Have you read this? And this? And this?
running sorry two
Death like a lover, caressing him, promising him peace, running its fingers through his hair, its tongue in his ear. She put her own two fingers in her mouth. Im so sorry. And pulled the trigger
two fire bird
If this was a sandalwood pyre she would have thrown herself in and this paper she'd become would have caught fire and she and him could sail away like two birds.
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.
los
Crime novelists do really well with Los Angeles.
body reader smell vivid
The thing that makes vivid writing is when the reader is in the body of the story, the body of the character. Things smell like something; there's weather, there's texture, there's light.
children concerned left nobody society
I've always been concerned with what happens to children in our society when there's nobody left to take care of them.
time
Dostoevsky was my literary idol for a long time.
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.
recreation solitary
My mother had been a solitary chef. It was her recreation and her escape.
good unless
I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.
family including pay wondering
I write every day, including weekends. For writers, there are no weekends. It's just that your family is around, looking mournful, wondering when you're going to pay attention to them.
mother spring sleep
The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I.