Bonjour! Writing Happiness: Author Jamie Callan on the Joy of Discovery

Jamie Cat Callan,Paris

Award-winning author and instructor Jamie Cat Callan tells about French secrets to joie de vivre in her latest book Bonjour, Happiness! Elizabeth Bard, author of Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes said, "With warmth and sincerity, Callan shares that most precious of French life lessons — when to say 'enough.'" To research her topic, Jamie traveled throughout France, interviewing hundreds of women to find their secrets to living a well-balanced life. In this guest post, she describes the process.

AMA: What's your background?
JCC: I grew up in Connecticut and taught creative writing at Fairfield University, Wesleyan University and the Educational Center for the Arts. My grandmother was French-American, and inspired me to find the secrets to joie de vivre and true happiness.

AMA: Tell me about the new book.
JCC: Bonjour, Happiness! Five Ways to Find Your Joie de Vivre, American Style goes beyond relationship advice and offers a unique brand of whole-life happiness, sharing French women's secrets to finding joy.

Bonjour, Happiness!

AMA: What are some of the particulars you address in the book?
JCC: I describe my journey throughout France and the U.S., meeting with hundreds of women and talking about struggles with weight and body image, accepting middle age, and for me, coping with a new marriage — at age fifty — and rediscovering my French heritage.

AMA: Sounds like fun research. What did you learn during the process?
JCC: I embraced the beauty, mystery and magic of discovering a new culture, a spiritual journey told from the viewpoint of an innocent abroad, someone searching for inspiration, not just from the French, but particularly from French women. As a middle-aged woman living in youth-obsessed America, I looked for French answers to aging gracefully and finding joy in an imperfect body. I'm not so much interested in finding the fountain of youth as I am in finding the fountain of happiness. As Dove's "real beauty" ad campaign suggests, I learned to find the joy of loving my perfectly imperfect self.

AMA: How did the process of discovery play into the writing process, and life in general?
JCC: This is such an excellent question! French Women Don't Sleep Alone was so successful that by the time I began researching Bonjour I felt much clearer about what I wanted to do with this new book. Also, I had met so many great women on my American (as well as French women) book tour, and a lot of their questions and concerns went into the writing of Bonjour. My language skills had improved along the way, so I was able to connect with and interview a lot more women. The more I got to know and become friends with French women, the more I understood my grandmother and her sense of joie de vivre. It was as if these women were bringing her back to me. I would say this was especially true of my French tutor, Madame M. who is very beautiful, very elegant and in some ways a surrogate grandmere to me.

AMA: What an amazing journey. What was the writing process like?
JCC: Here's something that might surprise your readers. The book proposal for Bonjour, Happiness! was originally for a memoir. I wanted to write about my childhood, my grandmother, my experiences in France. However, my very wise editor at Kensington said she wanted another advice book similar to French Women Don't Sleep Alone, but that this new book could use narrative as well as prescriptive. In the end, I wrote a kind of amalgam of memoir and self-help. I blended the genres into something new—I'm not sure what to call it. Maybe literary self-help? Whatever it is, I'm happy with the outcome and readers are responding positively.

For more information on Jamie's amazing writing journey, visit Bonjour, Happiness! Or see her at Jamie Cat Callan. The book is available on Amazon at Bonjour, Happiness! Five Ways to Find Your Joie de Vivre, American Style.

Embracing Life: With "French" and "Bonjour" Author, Jamie Cat Callan

Author Jamie Callan at Cafe del Industrie

Engaging author, instructor and happiness expert Jamie Cat Callan was inspired by her French grandmother to return to France and discover the secret to joie de vivre — at any age. She shares those secrets in her latest book, Bonjour, Happiness!, which serves up the latest adventures of one woman on a quest to rediscover her ooh la la through all things French and some things not so French. Bonjour, Happiness! will be released on March 29 by Citadel, Kensington.

Submit a comment on your writing ooh la la to Word for Words. The winning selection receives an signed copy of Jamie's French Women Don't Sleep Alone.

AMA: You already lead a well-traveled, experiential life. What was the most influential lesson you learned while researching your prior book, French Women Don't Sleep Alone?

JCC: The French taught me how to let go of the sometimes debilitating idea of perfection.

AMA: That's a tough task in a demanding world. What's the secret?

JCC: I've learned the art of the French shrug! Rather than apologizing (something I used to do for a lot — often, for no real reason), I will now lift my shoulders, look heavenward, smile slightly, even mysteriously, and pronounce "c'est la vie!" This tiny gesture has truly changed my life. I believe I am a kinder and more forgiving person — to myself, to my friends, to my family and to the world at large.

AMA: Sounds like a great approach, especially to the writing life, and very French. How do they embrace life in general?

JCC: Things happen. We live. We learn. C'est la vie!

AMA: Living, learning and life — not a bad way to embrace Valentine's Day, and the rest of the year.

Jamie Cat Callan is also an expert in drawing out the writer's creative side with The Writer's Toolbox: Creative Games and Exercises for Inspiring the 'Write' Side of Your Brain.

 

Collaborative, Multigenre Writing Is King (and Queen)

Lately, we've been hearing more and more that multigenre writing isn't the taboo it used to be, an approach that may work even better in collaboration. This week we have a guest post from Nikoo and Jim McGoldrick, authors of the May McGoldrick historical novels and Jan Coffey thrillers.

Here's their take on what makes collaboration and multigenre writing work.

AMA: So, who are May McGoldrick and Jan Coffey?

N&J: May McGoldrick, a historical romance writer, is a diligent and industrious professional. Jan Coffey is a bit neurotic, because she writes suspense thrillers. To be honest, May and Jan are really both the same people. We (Nikoo and Jim) have been collaborating as May McGoldrick on historicals and as Jan Coffey on thrillers.

AMA: Tell us a bit about what it's like to write in more than one genre, as more than one character and with more than one author—phew, that's a lot of hats!

N&J: First of all, we should tell you that we started setting our early stories in the 16th-century period because we had some academic background in the time period. Write what you know, they told us. But writing historical novels as May McGoldrick, we’ve always tried to create new stories, new characters, and new problems for our heroines and heroes to overcome. To do that, we’ve pushed ourselves to stretch into areas where we have needed to learn new things. We have to admit that if we only wrote about what we knew, we never would have written about murderous lairds, or covens of Highland women, or cross-dressing artists, or children with physical handicaps, or promiscuous English queens! Those things are just not a part of everyday life in the McGoldrick household.

AMA: So, what's your secret to having such a broad range?

N&J: The solution for us is research, imagination and mind-set. While in the mind-set of the historical writer we read Britain magazine. Research is a seductively pleasurable pastime that takes us, mind and soul, out of our daily life—and away from the writing we should be accomplishing for that day. It places us smack dab in the world that we are researching.

AMA: How does this work when you're May McGoldrick?

N&J: When we are May McGoldrick, writing a historical set (for example) in 1760’s England, we read things like James Boswell’s London Journal of 1762-1763. As May, we study about the wool industry of the 1500s and watch the History Channel (actually, though, it doesn’t have to be the History Channel. Any show with ruins will do.) In planning and plotting out our stories, we do about 20% of our planning upfront and 80% of it as we write. In May’s stories, the writing tries to capture some of the texture of the historical period. As a result, her scenes are sometimes longer than those of her contemporary counterpart, who finds that short scenes keep the pace of a story rocketing along.

AMA: What happens after the first draft, when you want to really ground the story?

N&J: In revision, we find that we need to shift our gears a little, too. As May McGoldrick, we live by the Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary and their references to the dates that words came into use. For example, are you able to say that a character was “mesmerized” by another character. F.A. Mesmer, the early hypnotist, was not alive until the 18th century; it just won’t do to use the term in the 1500s.

For more about May McGoldrick, Jan Coffey, and Nikoo and Jim McGoldrick visit Jan Coffey.