BY CHARLOTTE ALTER
Two decades ago, Jenny Jackson put aside her own writing dreams to become a book editor—but now her debut novel, Pineapple Street, is a New York Times best seller and a Good Morning America book-club pick, and has already been optioned for TV. The wildest part? She wrote it in four months, while holding down her job and raising a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. She also managed to talk to TIME as part of our series on how parenting shapes the people who shape the world; find more at time.com/parent-files
You’ve said that writing a novel was something you thought was out of the question for you, given your career as an editor. How did adding motherhood on top of that affect your perception of what was possible?
For some reason, having kids made me realize that my job was really solid. And I didn’t need to operate every single day like I was fighting for my career. Once I realized that I might have a little flexibility, then that sort of just gave me a longer leash to run. Writing the book came from a place of not feeling so afraid.
Can you tell me a little bit about how the writing actually happened? My husband picked up so much slack for me. I think it’s really rare for people to have the true 50-50. I have better than the true 50-50; I have the 60-40, and I’m the 40. In terms of the daily nuts and bolts of it, I was just waking up disgustingly early—4:30 or 5:00 a.m.—and writing in my pajamas. I would just sit there and caffein-ate. And then my children would sleepily emerge from the bedroom at like 6:45. And I was not ready to stop, so I would turn on cartoons. And we got to the point where I would give one child the iPad and one child the television remote. And then I’d give them granola bars when they were hungry.
At 8:30, my husband, who is not a morning person, would come to life. And we would assess the situation and be like: How rotten are their brains? How rotten are their teeth? Alright, let’s turn off all the devices, we’re going to try and eat some fruit and some yogurt. And so I’d parent for a bit and then get them off to school. And I would go for a run and think about the plot and the structure and mechanics, and then come home, brain dump onto the computer. And then shower, get changed, and do my real job. In the evenings, I would join the kids for dinner, and then put them in the bathtub. And while the kids were in the bath, I’d pour myself a huge glass of wine, and sit on the closed toilet lid with my laptop and write. As long as the water stayed w
