Jill Fordyce

Jill Fordyce was born and raised in Bakersfield, California. She received a degree in English from the University of Southern California and a law degree from Santa Clara University. While practicing law, she continued to study writing through the Stanford Continuing Education creative writing program.

Fordyce's debut novel is Belonging.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

We selected the title Belonging, because at its core, the novel is all about the undoing of aloneness that occurs when we feel like we belong and also, conveys a sense of warmth and hope. The story depicts what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong, the lengths we’ll go to try to fit in, the secrets we’ll keep, the people we’ll keep at arms’ length. It speaks to where we find belonging—in friendship, family, faith, a community. I had two different working titles before selecting the title Belonging. The first was Why She Loves Country Music—essentially a metaphor for the story itself, taken from a conversation between Jenny and Henry, where she tells him she loves the old country songs that tell a good story, are bittersweet, and have a happy ending. Then, for a while, I called the book, I Know You by Heart, a reference to the memories Jenny carries of all those she lost, what they taught her, the lasting nature of their love. Ultimately, Belonging was the best fit—an acknowledgment of the journey of Jenny’s immigrant great-grandparents, Jenny’s own longing for family, and Henry’s longing for acceptance.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I don’t think my teenage reader self would be surprised at all by my novel. In some ways, I feel like my teenage self participated in writing much of Part One, as I had to really get in touch with the memory of what it felt like to be a teenage girl. Belonging also includes many of the elements of story I’ve been drawn to since I was a teenage reader: coming of age, first love, childhood friendship, memory, music, family secrets.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

While much of the process of developing the characters and story was very organic, I knew where the main characters were going to end up before I began to write. I could see them after the passage of time, how their lives would ultimately unfold. The beginning was much more difficult because I had to decide where and when we would first meet these characters, and how that would impact our understanding of them. Belonging opens in the epic dust storm of 1977, when Jenny, Henry, and Billy are in eighth grade. The heightened drama of the day, with the dark skies, flying debris, and school being evacuated, gives early insight into each of these characters. Henry contemplates going out in the storm; Jenny wonders who will pick her up; Billy turns his camera lens toward Jenny and snaps a photo.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I am greatly inspired by music and lyrics and aspired to write a novel that would feel like listening to a favorite old song—lyrical and bittersweet, full of hope and longing. While writing Belonging, I thought a lot about craft of songwriting and how a great country song, in particular, uses imagery to evoke something universal. While every reader brings their own experiences to the page or the song, the story resonates in some way with each of them, triggers memory of their own coming of age. I also think music, above all else, can put us in a particular time and place, can evoke a particular feeling. Some scenes in the book were written with a song playing in the background that put me precisely where I needed to be to see the scene. An example is when "Melissa" is playing as Jenny and Heather have a difficult conversation about leaving home. It’s a summer night in the early 1980’s, the pool light shining through the bedroom window, they are going to sleep in oversized t-shirts, the room smells like popcorn and nail polish, and Gregg Allman is singing about reaching a crossroads.

Visit Jill Fordyce's website.

The Page 69 Test: Belonging.

My Book, The Movie: Belonging.

--Marshal Zeringue