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Back to Featured Interviews >> MEET JUNE CASAGRANDE
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| June Casagrande |
I dropped out of high school in the ninth grade, so when I finally turned things around and enrolled in college, it was a very unfamiliar world that I didn’t know how to navigate. I didn’t know what I wanted to study or what I wanted to do. I just had a vague idea that a college education could lead to a better life. That was true, but I definitely took the long road to get there.
If you didn’t write as a child, then when did you start writing and what inspired you to start?
One day when I was in my mid-20s and working at a terrible sales job, an idea for a book popped into my head. I wrote a truly awful novella, tried to publish it, and failed. But after that I realized I liked writing. I started looking toward newspapers, especially feature-heavy weekly newspapers, as possible outlets. I managed to sell a few freelance articles and was on my way.
What was your first job when you graduated from college?
I’ve had a lot of jobs -- a lot. Most of them bad. When I first graduated with a bachelor’s in political science, I was working as a waitress to pay school expenses. After I graduated, I couldn’t find a better job and needed the money, so I continued working as a waitress. Then I worked in sales, which I was even worse at than I was at waitressing! I bounced around in those two fields for years until I landed a copy editing job that led to a job as a news assistant at a small newspaper. There, I wrote some stories and eventually got promoted to staff writer. That’s when my long run of bad jobs turned good.
How soon after that was your first book published?
I graduated college in 1989, wrote that bad novella around 1991, and finally published my first book, GRAMMAR SNOBS ARE GREAT BIG MEANIES, in 2006. That book grew out of a weekly grammar column I was writing for a community newspaper where I worked.
Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?
The first agent I pitched GRAMMAR SNOBS ARE GREAT BIG MEANIES to said no. “I don’t think this is strong enough,” she said. The second one, Laurie Abkemeier of DeFiore and Co., said yes. She signed me within a week or two of receiving my query letter and my book was sold to Penguin within a few weeks. My second book, MORTAL SYNTAX, emerged from the GRAMMAR SNOBS book. It looks at a 101 little language issues that people nitpick and fact-checks their nitpicking. It’s amazing how often people’s grammar peeves are just dead wrong!
Do you focus on fiction or nonfiction? Which do you prefer? Do you find one easier than the other?
I’ve published three nonfiction books, all about grammar/writing. Because they grew out of a newspaper column, this wasn’t hard to pull off. Fiction, for me, is another matter.
Fiction is harder to sell, both for an author to sell to a publisher and for a publisher to sell to readers. Nonfiction has some built-in ability to find its audience. For example, books on healthy eating, home improvement, and celebrity gossip have a much easier time getting noticed by target audiences than do, say, thriller novels or romance novels. The home improvement book tells a certain reader, “I’m for you.” Novels can’t distinguish themselves as easily.
But that’s only a problem after you’ve written good, polished novel. I’m not there yet. I write fiction, but I’m still trying to master the craft. I find it much harder than nonfiction. Nonfiction flows right out of me. It’s something I want to say and I’m just saying it. Writing fiction means building something totally from scratch. It’s hard work.
Do you do other types of writing – for example, education, nonfiction, magazine work?
I still write a weekly column about grammar, except now it’s in four small community newspapers. I also work as a copy editor, which is great for a writer because it helps you think critically about sentence structure and writing mechanics. It gives you a feel for the difference between professional writing and amateur writing. I’ve also written a lot of articles – both as a staffer and as a freelancer – on topics ranging from city hall politics to surfing.
Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?
The people who answer “yes” to this question - I’m so jealous of those people. For my nonfiction writing, I have deadlines. But for my fiction writing, there’s no one pushing me but me, and I’m not too good at it. I know some novelists who write, say, 1,000 or 2,000 words a day, five days a week. I really admire them! That probably says a lot about why they’ve published novels and I haven’t.
When is your next book going to be in book stores?
I just had one come out a few weeks ago. It’s called IT WAS THE BEST OF
SENTENCES, IT WAS THE WORST OF SENTENCES. It’s about how to improve your
writing at the sentence level, looking at what makes some writing good and
other writing seem amateurish. I’m hoping it will help a lot of struggling
writers become great writers!