Author Jessica Blau: Drinking Closer to Home

This touching and funny story revolves around a family that is both eccentric and every family. Here's more from Jessica Blau:

Jennifer Haupt: Did your own family's quirkiness inspire this novel?

Jessica Blau: Yes, the family and story about the family are based on real life. My family is strange but I don't think they're any more strange than any other family. (I suppose the reviewers who compared my book to The Glass Castle would disagree!)

When I was writing this book, a friend who's a writer said to me, "You're so lucky that your family so crazy and you get all that material to use." I said to him, "Your family's equally crazy from what you've told me, but you're just not willing to write about them." So in way, I think that the difference between me and my family and many other families, is that I'm willing to say aloud what's going on, or what's gone on. I'm happy to put it out there in the world.

JH: You wrote a wonderful essay for The Nervous Breakdown about the eccentric family that lived next door to you when you were growing up in California. You talked about how normal your family was in comparison, and hinted at how that would change. What happened to change your family?

JB:

What happened is that my mother realized that she wasn't happy living the traditional life that had been assigned to her according to her gender. She didn't want to stay home, take care of kids, do the ironing and clean the house. And so she quit. That was how she put it-she told us she "quit." Once she quit, the responsibilities of the house were left to me, I was eight, and my sister, who was eleven. My brother was three so he was off the hook.

JB:

When you leave the care of a house, lunches, laundry, getting to school, etc. to two young girls, things don't look as "normal" as they did previously. My brother's pet bird flew loose and left its droppings all over the couch-no one ever cleaned them off, they just hardened and grew like stalagmites. I wore the same brown corduroy pants to school every single day in fourth grade and only washed them once. When they got holes, I rode my bike down to store and bought iron-on patches. Oh, and my mom started smoking pot around then, too, so my dad had a little marijuana orchard in the back yard.

JH: You have a fabulous gift for writing with humor, but also deeply touching the reader's heart. Are you a funny person in real life? Do you often laugh at situations others might not be able to see the humor in?

JB: People who read my books say that they are very funny. I don't deliberately write funny stuff-I just write it as I see it and somehow it comes out funny. I have been told that I'm funny in person, too, but I don't see myself that way and am never deliberately funny. I do laugh at just about everything. I have a hard time taking anything seriously. It seems to me that we all might die tomorrow, or in an hour-death is constantly hovering for me-and so compared to that, very little matters, and everything is worth laughing about. I don't have friends who want to argue over things-I won't waste my time in a relationship with people who want to bicker or nit pick. So all of my friends are funny people who crack me up whenever we're together. And my husband and I laugh about everything, although he's much more serious than I and he thinks that everything matters.

People are sometimes surprised that I laugh about my family and my childhood. I just got a note yesterday from someone I don't know who read something I wrote and wanted to let me know how terribly sad he felt for me and that he hoped I was happy and well now. It was such a sweet, kind note and I so appreciate that he sent it. But the truth is, even in the craziest most out-of-control times, like when my mother took all the furniture out of her and my father's bedroom and pushed it down the stairs-a giant wardrobe, side tables, etc.-there's only maybe a two hour lag for me between the horror of it (a woman tossing furniture down the stairs) and the hilarity of it (a woman tossing furniture down the stairs).

JH: What are your three most important writing habits? And what's one that you wish you could give up?

JB: My important writing habits include:

1. Write even when the conditions aren't perfect (they rarely will be) and even if you have very little time (twenty minutes of writing here and there adds up).
2. Don't judge the writing as you write, just do it, keep moving forward until you have a finished piece.
3. Once you have a finished piece, then you start judging and you rewrite it over and over again until it's so smooth you can't find any cracks or splinters (it's like sanding wood).

And the one I'd give up . . . checking email or Facebook every hour or two.

JH: You seemed to have mined your own family experiences for both of your novels. Have you started the third novel yet, and does it cover more personal territory?

JB: The third novel is mostly fiction-99 percent! It starts with a personal story, though. When I was in college, a guy once walked into my apartment holding a bread bag full of cocaine. And, at that same time, I worked at a dress shop that I later found out was a front for a cocaine dealer. I put those two things together and am writing a novel about a twenty-year old girl who emotionally is a lot like me, but whose family life and history is nothing like mine at all.

JH: What's the one true thing you learned from writing this novel?

JB: That's a nice question-no one's ever asked me that. I suppose it's this: In the end, all we have is love and nothing else really matters.

Jessica Anya Blau is the author of the highly praised novel, Drinking Closer to Home, which Target stores featured in their Breakout Author series. Jessica's first novel, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, was selected as a Best Summer Book by the Today Show, the New York Post and New York Magazine.