Guest post: "Wordaholic," by Jody Gehrman, author of 'Watch Me'
Like
many authors, writing is a compulsion for me. I’ve done it all my life and I
have no idea how to stop. People sometimes look at me with mild wonder when I
tell them that Watch Me will be my
eleventh published novel. “Where do you find the time?” they ask, or, “That
must take incredible discipline.” To me, this is akin to expressing admiration
for the number of cigarettes a chain smoker manages to plow through in a day.
Unlike
most of my addictions, though, I’d like to think this particular vice makes me
a fuller, richer person; I always have my “real” day-to-day world happening on
one level, and my interior, imagined world happening on another. This makes me
lose my keys frequently, but I’m okay with that.
One of
the pleasures of writing my first suspense novel was creating a world with writing at its center. Watch Me is a dark psychological
suspense novel about a creative writing professor caught up in a dangerous
relationship with her charming but psychotic star student. Strangely, this is
the first book I’ve ever attempted that features writers as the main
characters. My heroines are usually creative, and some of them write, but
writing has never been the focus of any of my books.
The relationship between Sam and Kate is a twisted one, but
their mutual love of writing is one aspect of their dynamic that’s somewhat
pure. Okay, maybe “pure” isn’t quite the right word, but at least it’s less
sinister than everything else lurking beneath the surface between them. Telling
their story gave me a chance to reflect on my life as a writer, and as a
teacher of writing. It gave me a chance to explore the bond only two people
caught in the throes of the same creative addiction can
share.
About the Author:
Jody Gehrman has authored eleven published novels and numerous plays for stage and screen. Her Young Adult novel, Babe in Boyland, won the International Reading Association’s Teen Choice Award and was optioned by the Disney Channel. Jody’s plays have been produced or had staged readings in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. Her newest full-length, Tribal Life in America, won the Ebell Playwrights Prize and will receive a staged reading at the historic Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She holds a Masters Degree in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California and is a professor of Communications at Mendocino College in Northern California. Watch Me is Jody Gehrman’s debut suspense novel
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