Write Now with Jacqueline West

Who are you?

Hi! My name is Jacqueline West, and I’m a novelist, poet, and parent living in Minnesota.

What do you write?

I write young adult and middle grade books (along with poems and short stories for adults), most of them of the dark and twisty variety. My first middle grade series, The Books of Elsewhere, is a creepy fantasy about a girl who discovers that she can climb inside of the paintings that hang on the walls of her family’s strange new home, and that those paintings are full of dangerous secrets. Last Things, my most recent YA novel, is my modern-day, Minnesotan, metal reworking of the legend of a musician who may have sold his soul to the devil. And my brand new YA, Black Point, is about a girl who is struggling to save her tiny hometown from the rising tides of change, but when outsiders buy the long-empty (and famously haunted) local hotel, hideous secrets from the town’s past begin to rise to the surface.

Where do you write?

My very favorite writing spot is the corner of a city coffee shop, where I can huddle over a notebook and let the world bustle around me. These days, though, most of my actual writing work happens at home, in the room we call “the study,” like our weird Victorian house is one big Clue gameboard. The study has a fireplace and bookcases on every side, plus a cluttered desk and a chair covered with blankets to hide the duct taped cushions. There’s usually a dog dozing underneath. It’s very cozy. It might be even better than a coffee shop.

When do you write?

With two young-ish children, I’ve gotten pretty good at writing in whatever bits of time I can get. On school days, I try to write in the mornings and leave early afternoon for the admin parts of the job. I’ve learned that if I want to focus on poetry, or if I need to get to that deep, all-consuming, almost unconscious space where I can do the real generative work, I should get up before anyone else is even awake and tiptoe downstairs to scribble in the dark. But most of the time, exhaustion wins.

Why do you write?

Because I can’t help it. When I was a kid, the stories I loved were so real to me that writers seemed like wizards—these incredible, immortal magicians who could bring entire worlds into being. I knew I wasn’t a wizard (drat), so I didn’t aspire to being a writer. But then I started to get ideas for little poems and stories, and those ideas would loop around in my head, getting louder and larger and more distracting until I put them down on paper. And that’s still how it works for me: I collect bits of story everywhere I go, in everything I see, and putting those bits together and trying to make them come to life on paper is how I make sense of and connect with the world.

How do you overcome writer's block?

I don’t know if I overcome it as much as I sashay around it. I’m always working on multiple projects at a time: Right now, I’m revising one YA, drafting another YA, planning the opening chapters of a new middle grade project, waiting for editorial feedback on another MG, and I have an adult project that’s currently on hold at Chapter Six—plus I try to fit in poems and short stories whenever there’s a sliver of time or a seed of inspiration. This way, whenever I get stuck on one thing (and I will!), I can turn straight to another, without having the chance to freeze up or quit.

Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?

Gah, I always feels so boring when people ask this question, because reading and writing are the only hobbies I have time for these days! (And are they hobbies when they’re also your full-time job? I don’t know.) Anyway, when I get the chance, I love performing in local theatre productions. I’m an intricate cake-froster and cookie-decorator. I love animals (dogs especially), and I love gardening, although I’m very haphazard about it. And I could spend many happy hours wandering around an old cemetery.

My thanks to Jacqueline West for today's interview.