The Memory Visit was a book that went through much change before being shared with the public eye. There were rewrites, let-downs from editors, and about three years of hard work from author Jenny Lambert before her goal was met.
“I finished the book, like the writing of the first draft within I don’t know ten months, it was just an addiction; I couldn’t get away from it. I started sending out query letters to see if anyone wanted to do anything with it. And that took years. But rejection after rejection is when I kind realized, oh, it needs more work. It’s not ready. I think that’s a common mistake that new writers make, I thought it was ready before it was,”
Ms. Lambert commented as she explained the long, tedious process of not just writing a book, but also getting it published. But she never stopped trying. She entered the story in a Twitter contest that she won, which awarded her a developmental editor who helped her fix up and eventually publish the story. When she looks back at the original draft of her book she says,
“It’s really different. I took out quite a bit, but saved it, like I couldn’t quite let some of it go, you know? Like oh, I’m just gonna put over here for a while and some of it actually ended up in the second book. So I’m glad I saved it, glad I held onto it.”
This truly shows aspiring writers that there really are no bad ideas. Sometimes they won’t work, sometimes they need edits, but they will always shine through at some point.
Though her book took up years of her life, she also spent her time elsewhere. She is a mother, a wife, a teacher, and when asked how she handles day to day life she responded,
“I felt guilty when I wrote the first book because my daughter was young, but now she’s leaving for college this fall so I’m feeling a little less guilty that she’s gone and I’ll continue to write. So I tried to involve her as much as I could, I tried to give her little bits of it and have her read it, give me feedback, and have her be a part of it. And she’s definitely my inspiration.”
She juggled so much that I’m sure she is an inspiration to her daughter as much as she is to her. It’s incredible how much she managed to do with the book with practically two other full time jobs.
How Jenny Lambert managed to build such a world that was never seen before will always astound me. With aspects of her own life, and her own experiences with memory and everyday life, she creates a very real dystopian world that could be an image of our future. From the drought, to the new technology, to the confusion, and the changes, every reader can connect to the story and see themselves and their worlds in the book.
As an author, Jenny Lambert is also a reader who loves books. She grew up reading and that childhood of surrounding herself with books is why she fell in love with literature, pursuing a career in writing and teaching. She noted her love for A Wrinkle in Time and Call of the Wild, which she picked up around the house from her brother’s high school classes. Her love ranged from graphic novels to comic books to even poetry books. With a little taste of all things reading, she managed to write a breathtaking and truly fantastic novel with unique ideas never before seen in the world of books.
In our interview, she gave some advice to aspiring authors, “The best thing to remember is to have patience, to enjoy the craft of writing, and the process of it is really what should motivate someone.” As an aspiring author myself, this guidance was especially helpful. Ms. Lambert had trouble getting her story published, but she still enjoyed writing it. The process is the most important thing to focus on: the joy of world building and meeting your original character, not the overall success of the story.
Book Bears is a student organization with the mission to inspire young readers, to promote literature and all it stands for. Jenny Lambert explained her stance on our goal, saying,
“I’m really glad that we have organizations and clubs like this because we can encourage young people to find a passion for reading, a story that really speaks to them, something that they can really see themselves in. It’s like a mirror, but it’s also a window. The mirror they can see themselves in, and the window they can see other people and other lives out there in the world.”
A truly inspiring message that the world we live in is not just about us. As she puts it, “reading creates empathy,” and the more children who grow up learning that, the better the world will be in the future.
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