Kate Jacobs Answers Your Questions on Sisterhood!

You asked the questions, she answered. Find out what Kate Jacobs had to say about sisterhood and The Friday Night Knitting Club!

Thanks to each one of you for sending such thoughtful questions about the novel and such wonderful comments about the book and about your own lives. I love getting a chance to know you a little bit! And I am so touched and honored by the way you've embraced The Friday Night Knitting Club. I hope you'll continue to tell your friends and family about the book, and keep writing! I love to chat with you.

My questions are the ones that intrigue me as a fellow writer. I'd like to know more about your routine as a writer, including any traditions, habits, superstitions or anything else that makes you unique. Do you outline your books or just let them flow? Finally, what drew you to the subject matter of this book, whether it was personal experience or the memories of such experiences? Thanks!

KJ: Hi again J! I am an outliner. It's true. And I wrote a bit about my writing process for gather. But the thing that I discovered writing The Friday Night Knitting Club was that a story truly comes from the clawing out of the sentences - that's where the characters take on their lives -- and that often times, when you're following your instinct and your characters, it's okay to veer from that outline. To follow the story where it takes you, and sometimes that can be different than what you anticipated. It's through the actual, physical writing of a book that I find the story I'm trying to tell, not from an idea or an outline. And because this particular story is all about the power of women's friendships, I spent much time reflecting on the women in my life as I wrote, and doing so became a rich source of material and emotion.

Also, what unusual hobby or habit NOT related to the book would surprise people to know about you? Do you collect something unusual (one writer I knew collected floatie pens, vintage pens with little floating advertisements in them hard to find). That sort of thing...

KJ: Tough one! I'm not a collector and my favorite hobby is reading. Sigh. I wish I had something so quirky to tell you but the truth is that I am a complete homebody and I just like to spend time with my husband and our dog, Baxter, and to chat with my friends. I suppose one habit I do have, typically when I'm writing and trying to procrastinate, is to play online puzzle games.

What advice do you give to a person who has a hard time making a friendship work?

KJ: Become a listener. Let someone know they are important to you by making the time to answer a phone call, or meet up for a coffee. When our lives are as busy as they are these days, it can become easy to put ourselves and our relationships at the bottom of the list after family and work and so on. But it's key to make friendship a priority and just take that time for each other.

Do you write both fiction and non-fiction? How do you feel about each category?

KJ: I love them both. My background is as a journalist, so for years all of my published work was non-fiction. But now I write fiction full-time, and I must admit I enjoy the freedom and flexibility to just imagine dialogue. That is quite a change from reporting, when accurate quoting of sources is essential!

What brought you to writing this particular book?

KJ: Writing fiction has been my lifelong goal; sharing stories is what I always wanted to do. And to me, FNKC is all about the power of women's friendships - of sisterhood, as we're talking about on gather.com - and so as I was writing I reflected very much on some of the wonderful relationships in my own life, such as with my friends and with my own knitting grandmother, and used that as a wellspring of emotion. An idea is just a starting point but I found the heart of this novel through sitting at the computer and crafting sentence after sentence and watching how the characters changed and developed as I wrote.

This is a fantastic book....my question would be simply this. When she writes such a book, does she mold her characters around persons she has had in her life or do they become individuals in their own right?

KJ: Hi Susan! Thanks for your kinds words! And great question. Well, I think each character exists in his or her own right. They are fictional and in fact, their personalities changed sometimes through the writing of the novel. Characters take on a life of their own! However, as a human being, we are all affected and influenced by the people in our lives, and, as a writer, all of your experiences can come out through your typing in different way. So it may surprise you to know that there are bit and pieces of me in all of the characters. Or almost all. Writing can make you very vulnerable because you are putting so much of yourself out there. Plus there are aspects of some characters who reflect people in my life, such as Georgia's Granny, who has some close ties to my own grandmother, who was called Nanny. And yet even Granny is her own person.

My question is: How did you determine whom most made you feel a "sister" connection, and caused you to come to depend on the relationship versus just a casual relationship? I meet many women, and the thought in my mind is how to trust, or know, you can be that close to another woman, or women. I have been fooled before.

KJ: We all have to run on our instinct. And I hear you, Ellen, because there have been times when I've not listened to that gut feeling, and paid for it. So how do we know who to trust? I know it can be hard to sort out but I think it's about how the other person makes us feel - safe or wary - and how we feel about ourselves when we are with them. And also not to rush into a friendship too quickly, and not overshare too soon. Foundations take time to build.

I would love to know what inspired you to write this book? Sisters form such a special bond and I am very intrigued by this.

KJ: Hi Pam! Let me tell you about some of the sisters in my life! I have always tried, when I make a friend, to keep a friend. And I still miss the few women with whom I've grown apart from over the years. But, overall, I have been tremendously lucky. For example, when I was in first grade, I met just the coolest bunch of girls, and we're all still close today. There's something very special about that type of group dynamic - it's like a web that catches you when you fall. A support network. And when I moved to NYC in my early twenties, I found the city to be so overwhelming. But, when I was working at my first job at Redbook magazine, I was introduced to this group of eclectic, ambitious young women. We started out as colleagues but we built true friendships and now we try to get together at least once or twice a year for "girls' weekends." It's crucial to make time for your friendships, I think, and also fun to sneak away from home for a little while!

Kate, my question is, "Do you have some ideas about how our sisters or groups of sisters can affect change?" Not necessarily world peace or anything large, just small changes that groups of sisters, or groups with sister type relationships can be in some way a positive force in other lives, outside of our little groups?

KJ: I do, and it's something I certainly don't do enough of myself. But it's about getting out there and participating in your community. Imagine if you and your girlfriends did a bit of volunteering together, whether it was doing dishes at a local soup kitchen or sorting clothes at a thrift shop. Or what if you just started within your group, and traded clothes and household items and/or kids' toys you didn't want or need, and saved yourselves from wasting or buying new? These are by no means original ideas, but once we put ourselves and our friends into the framework of "how can we help?' - which is what you're already doing, Cheryl, by asking the question - then there's no limit to the creative ideas we can dream. And have a lot of fun in the process!