Picoult '87 discusses writing influences

Jodi Picoult '87 has lived with an Amish family, visited death row, learned Lakota Sioux and gone on ghost hunts with paranormal researchers; all for the sake of the story.

Picoult, author of 14 popular novels, including several bestsellers, described her development as a writer and her research methods yesterday before a small crowd of University and community members in the James Stewart '32 Theater at 185 Nassau St.

"I've been waiting a long time to be asked to come back to Princeton," said Picoult.

As an undergraduate in the creative writing department, Picoult attributed much of her success to travel writer and former creative writing professor Mary Morris. "Mary Morris is ... the only reason why I'm standing up here today," Picoult said.

She published two short stories in Seventeen magazine while still a student. Her senior thesis was over 300 pages long.

Picoult said she originally struggled with the knowledge that her fairly normal upbringing as a white girl from Long Island didn't bring enough "anguish" to allow her to write about her own experiences.

"I realized that instead of writing what I knew, which no one would ever want to read, I had to write about what I learned," she said, explaining that the research experience is crucial to her works. "The idea is [not only] to whisk you away from your everyday life, but to create characters that are real enough and honest enough to make you want to go away in the first place."

Her latest novel, "Nineteen Minutes," is about a school shooting by a bullied teenage boy and the surrounding community's reaction. Since its release two weeks ago, the book has been atop The New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction.

Picoult wrote six issues of the Wonder Woman comic series for DC Comics, and the first issue will be released Wednesday.

Last summer, an editor from DC Comics contacted Picoult after reading the graphic novel that was incorporated into her book "The Tenth Circle."

"What made it really hard was also the most fun thing about it," she said of her experience working with Wonder Woman's story. "She's a character who's a cultural icon that's been around since the 1940s, so I can't really reinvent her," Picoult said. When she tried to formulate a Wonder Woman without the bustier, DC Comics would not let her.

This experience taught Picoult to work within a character's existing persona by developing it in a positive way. Picoult's work for the series focused on bringing forward the concept of "what it is like to protect humans when you're never going to be one of them."

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"I had a really great time," she said. "I would do it again if I could create a couple of extra hours every day."

While working with Wonder Woman allowed Picoult to reinvent a popular heroine, her books often focus on more sensitive subjects. "Second Glance," her personal favorite, includes the historical background of the eugenics movement in the early 20th century and how it affected the Vermont Abenaki Native American population.

"My Sister's Keeper" is a story about a young girl who is conceived to be a bone marrow donor for her older sister, who has leukemia, and who is eventually asked to give up a kidney.

Picoult said that she never adapts her research subjects into characters, but rather borrows their conversations and places them in the context of other characters and situations.

When asked if there is any research she will not do, Picoult said she has not encountered such an experience, but she does not think she would be able to write about trauma in her own life too soon after it happens because "[I] would need time to process it."

Picoult said that it takes her nine months on average to write a novel from conception to finishing the first draft; half of this time is spent "on the road doing firsthand research," she said, which can be hard when raising three children, two Springer spaniels, a rabbit and two donkeys in Hanover, Conn.

While at Princeton, Picoult was a member of Cloister Inn and was the first woman to be a coxswain on the men's crew. She married crew member Tim van Leer '86.