Jenny Gardiner on Getting Published
February 13, 2008
The funny thing about SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER is that it came about when the title came to me. I didn't have the story, but the title came into my head and it felt "catchy". So that meant I had to brainstorm an actual book. No problem, right?
The little thing was I didn't write fiction. Not one bit. I was trained as a journalist, and really the only writing I'd ever done was of the journalistic bent. I was, actually, very stuck on the idea of sticking with the truth.
But I'd been raising kids for a while, mired in what I tend to call the "fog of motherhood" for many years. The only reading I'd done was
People Magazine for about 5 minutes before I passed out at bedtime each night. My husband long used to joke about me one day writing the bestseller that would enable him to retire (yes, this is a fantasy that will remain in fantasy land no doubt!). But it annoyed him that I was frying my brain with trivial nonsense like what Madonna wore to her Scottish Highlands wedding (and I swear, if I end up with Alzheimers one day, I will be so furious that I can still remember what she wore to that thing yet won't remember my own name!!!). So I started reading books for the first time in forever. And I realized I had been missing out on so much. Then I started gobbling up books. I joined a book club, started reading books that took me to different worlds, times, ages, countries, you name it, and it was really food for my soul.
And then there was the point at which I started thinking, "I can do this!"
Which was when I started taking the chance with fiction. I really never thought I had it in me. I didn't think I had a vivid imagination. But I learned quite readily how liberating inventing your prose was. How often does one get the chance to just make up things and not get arrested?
So I just let my imagination go wild. Making up people and places and things. And wow, was it a lot of fun. From this, after a LOT of revisions, sprung my novel, SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER.
My path to publication was definitely unconventional. I'd submitted SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER to a contest I'd read about, the American Title III contest (sort of American Idol for books), sponsored by Dorchester Publishing, who was seeking humorous women's fiction. My goal was to attempt to bypass editors' notoriously long slush piles, into which manuscripts can be buried for a year or two. I didn't even know about the details of contest--simply that editors would read my work.
Nevertheless, I had the great fortune of being chosen as a finalist for the contest, and for the subsequent 6 months spent 2 weeks a month soliciting online votes to sustain me in the contest. I won, thank goodness, and was awarded a publishing contract. I've had the support of a fabulous editor, Chris Keeslar, who believes in my book, which is such a wonderful thing, and the support of thousands of people all over the world, who took faith in hand and supported me during the contest. The fabulous upside of all of that humping-it to solicit votes during the contest, was that it ended up being a marketing campaign I hadn't known I'd launched. I was able to garner the support of such terrific organizations as my university (Penn State) and its extensive alumni association, as well as my sorority (Delta Delta Delta) and both their active and alumni organizations. In addition, I had a crazy mix of people from all over the world voting monthly for me, including a submarine somewhere in the North Atlantic, Corgi breeders along the East coast, a swim team in Menlo Park, CA I didn't even know (they kept sending me erroneous emails about swim team event so I figured I'd enlist their support!).
In a way many of these folks were vested in my campaign, and were able to feel as if they had an active role in helping a book reach the marketplace, which I think is a really fun way to go about it.
The icing on the cake will be to sell this book, as aside from winning and publishing and having an editor who really loved my writing, is that now I'm getting wonderful reviews of people who also love the book, and it feels very validating, that after the many rejections that just seemed hard to swallow at times, there is the chance that a buying public just might like it too!
About Jenny Gardiner
Jenny Gardiner’s work has been found in
Ladies Home Journal, the
Washington Post and on NPR’s
Day to Day. She likes to say she honed her fiction writing skills while working as a publicist for a US Senator. Other jobs have included: an orthodontic assistant (learning quite readily that she was not cut out for a career in polyester), a waitress (probably her highest-paying job), a TV reporter, a pre-obituary writer, and a photographer (claim to fame: being hired to shoot Prince Charles–with a camera, silly!). She lives in Virginia with her husband, three kids, two dogs, one cat and a gregarious parrot. In her free time she studies Italian, dreams of traveling to exotic locales, and feels very guilty for rarely attempting to clean the house.
Jenny Gardiner Profile at OnceWritten.com
