I get the feeling that Jane Wenham-Jones is a tad uncomfortable with the chick-lit label. Which is a bit odd really, since she's rarely photographed without Chardonnay in hand, and often found ditzing around on some daytime TV show or other. In fact she may even be closer to a chick-lit character, rather than the author of two acclaimed novels. However any connection between her and a certain other Jones is purely coincidental and mostly in the name of publicity.

Jane began writing in 1995 and soon found her short stories published in a gaggle of women's magazines. Eventually she turned her experiences in the buy-to-let market into a debut novel, Raising the Roof, which after much hemming and hawing by agents, Jane managed to sell directly to a publisher as part of a two-book deal. The second became Perfect Alibis, a tale of mass infidelity, which Jane claims is based strictly on what her friends get up to.

A garrulous media tart (by her own admission) Jane has done everything she can to get attention for herself and her books. From after-dinner speaker, to newspaper columnist, to contestant on Ready, Steady, Cook, her motto remains 'never pass up an opportunity to be the centre of attention'.

So today we gave her that opportunity, and Jane told us about her path to publication, her adventures in the media, and why she is/isn't a chick-lit novelist.

Great Writing: Why do you write?
 
Jane Wenham-Jones: What else would I do? Am pretty much unemployable now! I guess I write because I love to - even when it makes me weep and wail and beat the keyboard. I started out using writing as a form of therapy, I think, although it was a long time before the discipline to go with it emerged. It wasn't until about ten years ago that I actually started finishing things and sending them anywhere.

GW: How did you get the novel published?

JWJ: I expect you've read stories about writers who became famous overnight. You know - they woke up one morning with this little idea that they might write a novel. So they dashed one off over the course of a  rainy weekend, found an agent on the Monday, were in an auction with ten top publishers by the Tuesday and banked their six- figure cheque on Friday just before they flew off to the States to discuss the screen-play. This didn't happen to me.

I wrote my first novel in 1998 - and sold it in August 2000. Nobody fought over me. Rather, they unplugged their phones, switched email addresses, took long sabbaticals on the other side of the world and instructed their assistants to tell me they'd died of a rare and sudden tropical disease. My file marked: "AGENTS - those who've said NO" - bulged and broke its seams. After a year of jiffy bags thumping depressingly back on the doormat, I made a detailed analysis of the list of objections in order to tackle a well-considered re-write. These were the conclusions of my study:

The heroine was both weak and too assertive. She was unbelievably naive and much too sharp-edged. There was an abundance of her mother in evidence and also not enough. It had a strong beginning and a slow start. The ending was unusual and predictable. My favourite sub-plot needed to stay in and be taken out.

73% of agents thought I was amusing, 47% would be willing to read my second novel if I didn't place this one, 18% suggested I try other agents. 1% offered to meet me for lunch. 100% were saying NO. And all the while, there were these nuggets of wisdom popping up in well-meaning articles that said how hard it was. (Oh really?) "It is easier to get a publisher than an agent" they cried. Do you believe that? Did I? Of course not! Do lottery winners swallow that junk about camels and eyes of needles? But was it worth a try? Even though the same wisdom also says that if you don't have an agent most publishers won't even open the envelope? I tell you, by that time, chaining myself naked to their steps seemed a viable proposition, never mind a couple of pleading letters. I emailed the first one. "Have written marvellous novel," I typed. "Would you like to read it?" "Why not?" he replied two hours later. "Send it by all means.."

He didn't buy it but he said all the things I wanted to hear. You have TALENT he said. A HIGHLY ORIGINAL VOICE! "Have you tried approaching an agent?" he asked me. Not blooming likely, I replied. But I was already emailing the next publisher. She replied in six minutes. "Anyone that can make me laugh on a Monday morning gets my vote," she wrote. "Please do let me see your manuscript."

And three weeks later she bought it. Well Hurrah and Thank God! Bring on the Champagne ..

GW: Did your previous success in short stories do any good in the eyes of publishers?

JWJ: Yes I think it probably did. I think at least it shows you can string a sentence together and can write commercially. And - if you have been published a lot - that your name is out there in some small way. There's always the hope that someone, somewhere might just a vague memory of reading you at the dentist's and decide to try your novel.

GW: When you sold a two-book deal, did you have a second book in mind? Was it more difficult to write under that pressure?

JWJ: Ha! Easy! I thought. Done it once - how difficult can it be to knock out a second one? It was a nightmare. Having had the totally brilliant (although I say it myself) idea of Perfect Alibis I realised when I sat down to write the thing, I had no idea what to do with it. My writing room was a sea of plot-plans. Everywhere I looked post-it notes glared back at me. TAKE DOG OUT? PUT CHARLOTTE BACK IN? HAS GEORGE MOTHER DEMENTIA?

After I had rewritten the beginning sixteen times, made a pig's breakfast of the middle and still had no clue as to what was going to happen in the end, the only certainty I had left was that that spending one's days emailing and putting writing magazines into colour-coded boxes does not bring the plot-fairy flying through the window. It got done in the end, of course, but writing a book is hard. That's what I think anyway, though some novelists claim to adore it. I particularly loath the sort that gush about how they forget to eat when they're deeply engaged with their protagonists and are driven to get out of bed at 3am because they've had such a divine idea for chapter twenty-seven. (I also make small plasticine models of them and keep them in my pin drawer).

People are fond of making comparisons between writing a book and giving birth. The analogy is supposed to centre around the nine months and the pushing and the wonder of creation at the end of it. For me it is the fact that you forget the sheer agony and the fact that you longed to castrate your husband with the forceps, and actually start to believe it didn't hurt that much and it would be a jolly idea to do it again.

GW: Now that you've made it as a novelist do you still write short pieces for women's magazines?

JWJ: Yes absolutely. Not that often these days but if I do then I thoroughly enjoy it. I also love doing bits of journalism when I get the chance, such as my column in Writing Magazine and the odd piece in the national press. There's sometimes a bit of snobbery shown towards short story writers - I always say to anyone who is sniffy about women's magazine stories or Mills and Boon come to that - how many have YOU had published? Anyone who thinks it isn't "proper" writing, should try it!

GW: How different is your approach to novel writing compared to short stories?

JWJ: I cry a lot more. I sometimes wonder if I have an adult version of an attention-deficit disorder - my mind jumps about between so many things. Short stories suit my need for the short sharp fix; I usually have a single idea and a couple of thousand words to develop it. Generally I'd write the whole thing in one hit before I can forget anything and then go back and edit it the next session.

Novels on the other hand seem endless and painful. In a novel there are lots of ideas, themes and strands which you need to keep in your head for months! I get very impatient to get to the end of the first draft so it's all there and sorted and ready for the editing which is the nicest bit. It's a bit like banging your head hard against a brick wall; lovely when it's finished.

 

GW: Do you write to the conventions of the chick-lit genre? Is there a danger there of legitimising 'dippy' heroines as a realistic reflection of modern women?

JWJ: I didn't feel my second novel was chick-lit and my third certainly isn't. I do try hard to just write what I want to say but obviously I'm conscious of the market and the dos and don'ts that have been raised in the editing of previous books.

As for  'dippy heroines' - what's wrong with being dippy? Seriously though, while I adore Bridget Jones she's got a lot to answer for. Since she leapt to fame, anything with a pastel-hued cover, written by a female under fifty, is automatically classed as chick-lit, regardless of its content. When Raising the Roof came out, it was understandable. My heroine, Cari, was 32 and had recently been dumped by her husband. And true, she spends much of the book with her head in a bucket of Frascati, stuffing chocolate fingers and dreaming of a damn good time in the sack with the sort of Mr Right who will cart her away from it all. But the novel also deals with debt and dysfunction and mental illness. This didn't stop reviewers - who had presumably taken one look at the cover - labelling it "frothy".

 

Perfect Alibis has a heroine of almost forty. Stephanie has two stroppy children, a grumpy husband ten years older than her, and, as the story opens, her main preoccupation is finding a job. This has been referred to as "classic chicklit". How? Why? The cover, maybe? The fact that I lie through my teeth and pretend I am still 39?

 

Please don't get me wrong. I don't mind being seen as a chick-lit writer - who wouldn't want to be Helen Fielding or Fiona Walker? - but I sigh over the assumption that I must be writing about some empty-headed bimbo, stressing over where her next pair of Manolos is coming from. I sigh too, over expectations that I will remain in my cast.

 

My third novel deals with addiction, infidelity, childlessness and depression. "Oh," said publishers, "it isn't as funny as we thought it would be..." It wasn't meant to be. Or: "a few good jokes but rather a lot of serious issues..." Why is that such a bad thing? When one is "chick-lit" it seems, for all our progress, we are still meant to write about a certain type of woman. She mustn't be spoilt or selfish, jealous or lazy - even if we frequently are. Neither too fat nor too ugly. She is permitted to think she is, as long as the de rigour top-shag of a bloke assures us that she has a fabulous body and he was bowled over by her beauty the moment he saw her - even if she has told us herself that her hair was unwashed at the time and her top lip badly needed bleaching.

GW: How important is self-publicity in ensuring success?

JWJ: Some writers are shy, retiring creatures who like nothing better than to remain in their dusty attics hunched over their latest masterpiece shunning the limelight. I am not one of those. For me, writing the books is the grim, time-consuming, frustrating, drink-too-much-and-pull-your-hair-out part of the proceedings. The lovely bit is when it's all over, you've been hugging the final, finished, published copy all day and you can get out there and start talking about it.

 

I adore being interviewed, photographed, recorded, filmed and generally having my every word hung upon - even though the end result is invariably a picture/videotape/soundtrack where I look twenty stone, have three chins and sound like Pollyanna on speed. When Perfect Alibis came out, with its shout line: How to have an affair and get away with it (if you're interested it has some hot tips!), it got quite a lot of media attention. An article in The Sun led to an invitation to go on Trisha (I didn't in the end) and an appearance on Kilroy (which was an experience). I've also appeared on Ready, Steady, Cook, The Salon, Just for Starters, and once nearly choked to death on BBC Radio Leicester.

If streaking down Oxford Street would result in a million sales I'd seriously consider it. You have to do everything in your power. Cos nobody's going to go browsing down on the floor under W and buy my book by chance.

GW: In doing a lot of self-publicity, are you conscious of developing an outward market-friendly persona that deviates from your private self?

JWJ: No I am friendly anyway! Seriously, I guess I come across publicly as a lot less neurotic than I really am. But I do try and be myself. I am essentially an honest person I think  - what you see is what you get - and whenever I try and adopt a persona - eg that of someone sane and sensible - I usually come unstuck.

GW: Is writing novels the path to riches?

JWJ: For some! Best to shack up with someone loaded and keep doing the lottery just in case.

GW: If you could go back ten years, what advice about writing would you give yourself?

JWJ: Talk less, write more.

Jane's books, Raising the Roof and Perfect Alibis are available from bookshops on and off the Internet. A third book, One Glass is Not Enough will be published in October. For more of her adventures, you can also check out Jane's website.