"... Experiences need to be integrated into the whole of one’s life in order to outlive them and break their spell of shame and rage."
-- Judith Guest, June 2014, on what she wishes for some of the characters she creates
About the Author
I was born in 1936 in Detroit, Michigan and grew up there, attending Mumford High School in my freshman year and graduating from Royal Oak Dondero High school in 1954. I studied English and psychology at the University of Michigan and graduated with a BA in Education in 1958, whereupon I promptly:
a) got married to my college sweetheart,
b) got a job teaching first grade in Garden City, Michigan, and
c) got pregnant and had a baby boy—all inside fourteen months.
I started writing -- without telling a soul -- when I was about ten years old. That tradition continued as a young newlywed and mother. I'd stick my reams of paper in drawers, never finishing anything. I taught more school, had two more sons and then, in 1970, I wrote a short story and sent it to a national contest, where I won 60th prize out of 100.
My reward? A book by Richard Perry entitled One Way to Write Your Novel. I read it from cover to cover and thought, "Hey, I already know all this." So I set out to write a novel. It took me three years. And, in fact, I decided to quit teaching and concentrate on finishing something. In retrospect, it was the most important decision I’ve made to date about my writing.
From Ordinary People...
After I finished Ordinary People, I sent it to a publisher, who turned it down flat. The second sent a rejection letter that read in part: “While the book has some satiric bite, overall the level of writing does not sustain interest and we will have to decline it.” (I know this letter by heart—didn’t even have to look it up.) The third publisher, Viking Press, hung onto it for 8 months before they decided to publish it.
They published my second novel (Second Heaven), turned down my third (Killing Time in St. Cloud), so I went to Delacorte. Delacorte turned down my fourth (Errands), so I went to Ballantine (which had turned down my first one). Ballantine turned down my fifth (The Tarnished Eye) so I went to Scribner. This is the book business in a nutshell. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
I have now finished a sequel to The Tarnished Eye. It’s called White in the Moon. After I finished that one, I wrote a sequel to Second Heaven, called A Different Life. Some of my characters don't leave me, and I write to find out how their lives have been going since I last saw them.
To Extraordinary People
I suppose I become rooted to some of my characters the way I do most other things in my life. I've had friends since grade school. I continue to spend summers at the childhood town where my father built a cabin. I am deeply attached to my three sons and my seven grandchildren. Sadly, I lost my husband a few years ago. My family and friends, my home and cabin life -- that is my obsession and best material.
I think I should also say that I am the great-niece of Edgar A. Guest, who was at one time the Poet Laureate of Michigan and who wrote a poem a day for the Detroit Free Press for forty years. Which is where I get my endurance from. I can write for a long time and not get tired.
