Francine Prose
Francine Prose
Francine Prose has enjoyed a long and accomplished career as an author of unique novels and short stories for adults and also for children. She writes fiction that blends elements of reality with elements of the fantasy. She is the current Sidney Harman Writer-in–Residence at Baruch College. She wrote over 15 books of fiction and many non-fiction books, including the most recent Reading Like a Writer.
Francine Prose has been traveling extensively, on tour for her new novel, she describes her experience of reading the same excerpts on every tour, “I wish I could take a nap while reading.” She incorporates a lot of humor and jokes while telling us about her experience as a writer and a journalist. Because the most part of her audience is college students, she even tells us about life, “whatever your life is now, its gonna change.” I assume we shouldn’t get too used to the everyday happenings.
When it comes to writing, she tells us she never knows where she’s going and where the endings are going to be, which is how we get the unexpected plot twists. While answering questions, she manages to tell us a little bit about herself. As a child, she wrote ghost stories (to tell them to the children she babysat), and from then on, she had a few jobs from which she was fired. This made her realize that writing was something she was extremely good in, and according to her, she “couldn’t do anything else.” She was fired from every single job she took, “I can’t even drive.”
When asked why she prefers to write fiction instead of journalism, she replies by saying that fiction is more fun. She has all the material, and all she has to do is figure out a way to finish the story. Ms. Prose’s first novel was published in 1973, “when the school bus came I started working, when school bus came back, I stopped working.” She hasn’t had the chance to have a writer’s block because she “had to pay bills.”
When she first started out as a writer, she wrote a weekly article for a magazine, entitled “How to make your kids eat vegetables,” and she humorously adds that even though she couldn’t make her own kids eat vegetables, she had to write the article, and she had to support her family. I think this happens to many writers; at times they are forced to write about things they don’t fully agree with or know about.
As I gathered from both her books and her persona, she is very passionate about great writing, and writing in general. She says she doesn’t have any authors that she hates, but “if a writer has been around for 100, 200 years, it must be because it’s good writing.” She had many authors and books that inspired her, and that can be found in the book Reading Like a Writer, at the end of which there is a list of 180 books that inspired her writing. Hey, maybe if I read all those books I will too become as great a writer as her!
