The Right Agent Is Key: Jennie Shortridge on Her New Book, and On Writing

Jennie Shortridge is a founding member of Seattle7Writers, a collective of well-published Northwest authors devoted to promoting literacy in their communities. She writes mainstream fiction/women's fiction that often touches on serious mental health issues in some way. I went to a reading she gave on her latest book (LOVE WATER MEMORY). Two things stood out from that event—how interesting the book is, and how important it is to find the right agent and publisher who will support the writing process that's right for you.

First, the book: I was riveted by the passages she read, about a woman who wakes up standing in the San Francisco Bay and has no idea who she is, where she is, how she got there, or why she's there. She has a rare and dangerous form of amnesia called dissociative fugue, which is brought on by emotional trauma.

She's taken to a hospital in San Francisco, and her fiancé, who has been searching frantically for her since she disappeared from their home in Seattle a week earlier, finally finds her when her picture is put on tv. But of course she doesn't recognize him when the doctors bring him to her, and for a long time after she goes back to Seattle nothing seems to help her jar her memory so that she can reclaim her life. What snippets of memory she does get are confusing, and as she begins to learn about herself from possessions and people around her, she realizes she doesn't like her old self much at all.

Needless to say, the book is a great read. Highly recommended.

Second, making sure your agent is one who will support your writing process. Rather than reprise what she said at the reading, I'm going to share a video of Jennie with you, in which she's being interviewed for Author Magazine. It's an interesting 9 minutes, (she talks about the agenting issues starting around minute 4).

Click the link below to go to the video, and enjoy!

Jennie Shortridge (Love, Water, Memory) says the biggest lesson she learned writing her fifth novel was that agents make a difference. In this case, her new agent told her to take as much time as she needed to finish her novel. As she explained in her interview with Bill Kenower, the result was perhaps her best work to date. Writing teaches us that all our choices matter. Jennie says she will never choose to rush a novel again.