According to developmental psychologists, adolescence is a period
of numerous changes, one of which is the adolescent's need to
change her/his relationship with parents. While many YA authors
have utilized this theme in their writing, Gayle Friesen, an
exciting new voice in Canadian juvenile literature, provides a
rich, fresh treatment in her first novel for adolescents,
Janey's Girl. August finds Claire Harrison, nearly 15, and her
never-wed mother, Jane, motoring from Toronto to rural Smallwood,
BC, to visit Claire's recently widowed maternal grandmother,
Elsie. Claire, who had never met her grandfather, had last seen
her grandmother four years previously when Elsie had visited them
in Toronto. Many questions nag at Claire, one being, "I wonder
why my mother has done her best to keep my grandmother out of my
life," but the question, along with many others, remains unasked,
for, as Claire explains, "This is another thing about us. We
respect each other's privacy." Consequently, Claire simply and
correctly assumes that the trip's purpose is to allow her to get
to know her grandmother better; however, as events unfold, Claire
discovers that it is really her mother she has not known. Though
their mother-daughter relationship has been quite loving, Claire
acknowledges, "There are topics we discuss and topics we avoid.
And family is one of the topics we avoid." Two individuals, in
particular, are rarely mentioned: Claire's father, Harold, and
Jane's father, Abe.
This trip also marks the first time Jane has returned to
Smallwood since she left it 16 years before, at age 18, while
still pregnant with Claire. Though Jane acknowledges that "this
[coming 'home'] is a bad idea" and states that "I'm not here to
undo anything...," in Smallwood, Jane is not seen as the
independent, self-assured and successful big city real estate
agent; to the locals, she is simply Janey, the Harrison's
daughter, and Claire is Janey's girl, Clarissa.
During the month-long visit, Claire meets her father, Harold
"Mac" McGregor and discovers that she has a half-brother, seven year-old Jamie, who has cancer and desperately needs a bone
marrow transplant. Over her mother's strenuous objections, Claire
decides that, if she is a suitable match, she will provide the
required marrow. Gradually, Claire also uncovers her mother's
"story." Jane ultimately explains, "My father was a very rigid
man. He lived by a set of rules and he expected everyone to do
the same." As a teenager, Jane chaffed under those rules: "I just
hated not being able to decide for myself." Ironically, Jane has
unknowingly become an Abe clone for Claire recognizes that "she
[Jane] just likes to think she lets me make choices." And in the
same fashion that Abe had defended his controlling behaviours by
claiming that they were his way of protecting Janey from the
world's harm, Jane rationalizes her silence about her family
history by asserting, "I was trying to protect you, Claire."
Fortunately, Claire gains the self-knowledge that she had also
begun to employ her grandfather's/mother's pattern of behaviour in her emerging relationship with Jack, a local teen.
Gayle says that "I think Janey's Girl's origin was actually on
a drive. Coming home from taking my daughter, Alex, to
Chilliwack to visit my parents, I was just thinking, 'What would
it be like to move back there, to move back to Chilliwack now as
a grown-up with a daughter? What if circumstances were such that
I was actually going to live there? What would it be like for
me, and what would it be like for Alex to grow up in a place
where her mom had grown up, a small town?' I'd always been quite
anxious to leave Chilliwack for no reason other than that I
wanted to move on and settle in a big city and all that. But
what if there was a reason to move back? As I shifted the focus
from myself to another character, the mother, I wondered, 'What
if a secret was the cause of her departure? How would this
secret affect the daughter?'"
Born in Chilliwack, British Columbia on September, 18, 1960,
Gayle is the youngest of four girls. "I have three older
sisters. The eldest is 10 years older, and the other two, seven
and five. I have the odd distinction of being the youngest as
well as kind of an only child, a situation which should make me
quite horrible I guess. My parents built our house the year I
was born, moved in with me as a baby, and I stayed there all my
life. It was nice to grow up in the same neighbourhood and have
the same friends going to school."
Gayle characterizes herself as being "very much a reader through
school. I remember L.M. Montgomery because I wanted to be Anne
Shirley and Little Women. Books like that I read over and over
again because I just loved them. Emily of New Moon was another
of my favourites as well as all of the Walter Farley "Black
Stallion" books. And I had the bleak period, the dark years in
high school where I read a lot of Harlequin Romances."
"I think I always wanted to be a writer, but, at some point, I
decided that it was too lofty a goal, and so I put the idea in
the back of my mind. I had some interest in being a journalist,
but I thought, 'Oh, I couldn't handle watching the news.' I was
interested in anything that had to do with writing, but I wasn't
quite brave enough to say that I really wanted to be a writer
until I was well into my twenties. Everything I thought about
doing had something to do with writing, but I could never quite
put my finger on anything. I ended up going to college still
believing I would get inspired. I went for four years thinking,
'One of these days it's going to hit me, what I should be.' In
the meantime, I studied English literature and loved it, but I
knew I didn't want to teach."
"Married about five years, I was pregnant as I was about to
finish my last course for my final credit. The expected delivery
date was to be nip and tuck with the course's end date, but the
baby, Bradey, didn't think that was such a good idea, and so he
came six weeks early and threw off my plans. I ended up finishing my course with a little baby and a very understanding
prof who let a few assignments slip by. So, it ended up that,
just as I was finishing that phase of my life, I was starting a
whole new one raising Bradey. A few years later, there was Alex,
and so the pair kept me busy."
While Gayle graduated from the University of British Columbia
with a B.A. in 1986, "I sort of did my university in clumps.
After high school, I went to Europe for about a year, to a Bible
school in Sweden. I did some travelling which was wonderful.
When I came back home, I worked in a bank for nearly a year to
pay off my experience in Europe. I then went to college, got
married and took a year of university. After that, I worked for
two years in a court house. That was an interesting job which I
enjoyed except when I unfortunately adjourned court a little too
early some days. It took me a while to catch on to what the
judge was saying, but I got to say things like, 'Order in Court'
and 'All rise.' It was a good job, but I wanted to finish my
degree and I wanted to have kids. I didn't think that I would
have much time after they were born, and so I went back to
school."
"I believe how I moved into writing was just that it finally hit
me that this was what I wanted to do and that there was no risk
in trying it. It was so simple. I don't know why it didn't
occur to me before except I think part of me thought that writers
had to have more of an interesting life than I had had. I
figured I had to have suffered more or have had a horrible
childhood or have been very adventuresome. And I didn't qualify
in any of these. It seems silly because, by then, I had read the
Bronte sisters and other people who had hardly lived a wild life.
So I just decided to try it."
"I thought I would start off writing for kids since, as a mother,
I was reading so many kids books. Because I was enjoying reading
these books again as much as my kids, I would see if I had a
talent for that area. Well, I found I wasn't very good at
writing picture books for, as it turned out, they were too long.
I took a course at UBC with Sue Ann Alderson who wrote Bonnie
McSmithers, You're Driving Me Dithers. The course was in the
Creative Writing Department, part of the Master's program, but I
wasn't taking the degree. Sue Ann's a wonderful teacher. One
day, she said, 'Try writing the first chapter of a novel.' I
did, and that was just 'it' for me because I could sort of
already see the second chapter and the third, and I ended up
finishing it. That was something that I could pursue, and it
gave me a great feeling."
"I actually took two courses from Sue Ann, one after the other
and then a different kind of special projects course with another
fellow. So, for three years I was at UBC learning aspects of
writing for children. And, by the second and third year, I was
focusing mostly on writing novels because that felt like the
right 'place.' Sue Ann's first course gave us an overview of all types of writing for children. We did some drama, poetry, and
some picture books. She tried to give you a little taste of
everything. We would critique each others' writing, and that was
a great experience. I really recommend it to people who are
interested in writing. It gets you over your fear of having
somebody read what you've written."
Of course, there comes the time when feedback from peers is not
sufficient and the aspiring writer must risk confronting the
realities and challenges of the marketplace. "I think deep down
most people want to hear that their writing has progressed, and
so the ultimate compliment would be if Sue Ann would say, 'You
know. I think it's ready to send out.' She wasn't about to say,
'It's ready to be published,' or 'It's ready to be accepted.'
Rather, it was, 'Take that first step. It's a long road and
that's the first step to it.'"
"Once you get used to rejection letters, you realize that they're
not actually the worst thing in the world, especially when
somebody takes the time to say something kind about what you've
written. As well as picture books, I sent out that first novel
that I'd begun in Sue Ann's class. That was a two year period
where I'd have people looking at it and having it gone for six
months at a time. Of course, I'd be sending it out to only one
publisher at a time because I didn't want to get into trouble
with anybody by doing multiple submissions. This was before I
discovered query letters and sample chapters, something that I
learned from that experience. However, having something out for
two years is a very long, frustrating period of time. I don't
think that particular manuscript will be published, and I don't
think that it needs to be, but I suspect some of its characters
may still survive somewhere along the line. You never know."
"There was also something else that I'd written after that first
novel that was in response to a class assignment, and so I did
that for another year. I never really sent it around because it
didn't feel right, but it was part of the learning process.
There's so much to learn. Janey's Girl was the third novel
length manuscript, and by then, I wasn't taking courses. It just
came as something that I thought was a good story."
"The character of Janey, I think, came from me deciding that my
own story wasn't very interesting, and so wouldn't it be
interesting if I'd left Chilliwack under difficult circumstances?
In fact, I don't even think that when I thought of the character
I realized she would have been pregnant and leaving for that
reason. The first thing that came to me was Janey's idea that
moving back was a mistake or a bad idea, and, after that, the
daughter just wonders why. And the oddest thing about this book,
and maybe it was a good thing, the story just fell into place
from that point. I've experienced the other side of writing
enough to know that this was unusual. I've appreciated how much
a gift it was because it doesn't always happen that way. That's
kind of what I've been going through lately." In writing Janey's Girl, I didn't really know what was going
to happen next. It was really quite exciting to write the book
because characters would appear and circumstances would come up.
As I'd go from chapter to chapter, I almost felt like I was
meeting people, and it unfolded in a way that worked. There was
lots of rewriting and drafts and all that stuff later as I was
trying to piece it all together and make changes, but I'd have to
say that the skeleton of the story just kind of flowed. I'm
honestly not sure where it came from, but once I'd established
that Claire didn't know her father, I knew there was somewhere to
go with the story, and then, of course, you just ask the
questions, 'Well, why doesn't she?' Why would Janey keep it from
her? And what had he done?" I think I went through a few
scenarios before I ended up on the one that felt right. All that
stuff comes gradually."
Jamie was one of Gayle's surprise characters. When Claire first
encountered Jamie at the stream, Gayle says that she, as author,
did not immediately recognize the boy's filial connection to
Claire. "I also didn't know that Jamie was sick, but, by the
time the man, Mac, came along and rescued the pair from the bull
and Claire was meeting him, I had made the connection that he
would be her father, and so, for me, it was right there that I
knew who Jamie was. The sickness didn't come until later when I
tried to think of a way that would take the focus off of Claire's
meeting Mac. I didn't want that to be such a focus of the book.
I wanted it somehow to be a bit of the backdrop, and the only
thing that would, to me, be realistic would be to include
something that was more important. Obviously a life and death
situation of a young boy puts almost anything in the background."
Janey's Girl offered the possibility of a happy-ever-after
ending involving a "cured" Jamie and Claire's parents being
reconciled. Instead, Gayle opted for a more realistic open
ending. "For one thing, I wanted to be true to Jamie's disease.
I couldn't have him bouncing out of hospital. And I also didn't
see any purpose in a sad ending for Jamie when there's supposed
to be a hopeful ending for Claire and her mom. To me, if you are
to have that sense of hope in the mother-daughter relationship,
then it would be overshadowed by Jamie's death. My son's big
question after reading the book was, 'Would Mac and Janey get
back together?' I don't know the answer to that. I think Janey
would have to work through some stuff herself before such a
reconciliation would be even possible. I don't even see their
becoming a couple as being a part of the 'happy' ending idea. To
me, if Mac and Jamie go and visit Claire and Janey in Toronto,
that's the beginning of a whole new thing, and, if that worked
out, then that would be the happy ending."
"Janey's Girl went through at least three drafts before I sent
it out some two and a half years ago. I didn't quite have the
courage to give the manuscript to a young person before trying to
get it published. My son, in fact, didn't read it until it came
out in book form, and then, to my relief, he loved it. Unlike my previous experiences, this manuscript was very quickly accepted,
and then, after the contract was signed, it became a two year
project. The editing process, my first editing experience, was a
great experience. I was working with Charis Wahl. For one
thing, there weren't any major rewrites, or at least what she
would call a major rewrite. When I received the manuscript back,
I would have thought a 16 page letter was a major rewrite. The
points Charis made were very specific though and very good. As I
got into the work, I realized that it was mostly adding a few
scenes here and there and clarifying some situations, but nothing
central to the plot was being changed. I think I made Claire a
year younger than she was in the original manuscript. In terms
of what editing situations are often like, it was not a major
rewrite, but, for me, it definitely took some work. It's a very
different experience when you're working with somebody else and
they're giving you their ideas. Charis had very good ideas and a
very strong sense of the characters too. There were some changes
involving Jack because originally I had made him not as realistic
as Charis felt he should be. I think I made Jack too much a
super-teen, and so I tried to play that down a little bit. The
changes were more shades rather than actually erasing a lot of
stuff and starting again."
Writers who are also parents have to find time to work at their
craft. "When the children were younger, nap time was when I did
my writing. Because my husband works, I've been in the wonderful
position that once the children got into school, writing was what
I did and still do. Mornings are booked for writing. I quite
often go to a coffee shop. That setting puts me in a different
frame of mind than being anywhere close to laundry and dishes,
horrible reminders. I usually write until one or so, and then,
in the afternoon, I knock off. You can get a lot done in four
hours five days a week. I do longhand to begin with, and then I
come home and put it on the computer. When I'm in the second
draft stage, I work more at home because then I'll be working on
the computer. However, for the first draft, which is the most
fun, I do it all in longhand, and I get cramps in my hand. I
think a person would have a heck of a time following the progress
of my longhand. Reading it would be one thing. I don't outline
because I don't find that works for me. I had a writing teacher
once say that, if you know the ending of the book even while
you're writing it, then it's probably a pretty thin book.
Initially that was discouraging because I'd get some great
concluding scene in my head, but I realized that he's actually
quite right because you've got to let yourself be surprised as
well and open to change."
"I'm part of a writing group that meets every six weeks or so.
The reason I mentioned my writing group in the "Acknowledgements"
of Janey's Girl was that they were so key in their comments and
their encouragement. They know what it takes to keep going after
this year after year after year, and that's just invaluable.
While we met during the writing classes, it's really been in the
last two years that we've been a writing group. They're there to read your stuff and be able to give you the kind of critical
comments you need because friends or relatives read it and go,
'That's great!' I don't know if this is common or not, but I
didn't really have a strong sense that I would ever be published.
While I knew that I loved writing, I had read so many wonderful
books, so, 'Why me?' especially when you hear about how many
manuscripts come over a publisher's desk in any given period."
"My writing often starts with the question, 'What if?' With the
story that I'm working on now, I was sitting around the kitchen
table listening to my mother talk about my Aunt Margaret who's
had a very interesting life. She's had a very rough time, and
she's had everything thrown at her, but she's managed to come up
as a stronger person. I thought, 'What a neat story that would
be,' and so the character came out of her, but then she became a
different character than Aunt Margaret. The main character is a
boy, Ben. I'm quite nervous about writing from a boy's
perspective because I don't know if I can do it, but I'm going to
try. Growing up, I always thought it would be great fun to be a
boy, and so I'm really enjoying this. Boys get to say stuff
differently. I hope it's working because it feels like it's
different than the voices of other characters that I've worked
with. I sort of wanted to do it for Bradey, too. While he
enjoyed Janey's Girl very much, I do know that boys tend to
read about boys, and I loved the idea of giving it a try. I have
no idea if I can pull it off or not. So, we'll see."
"Every time one novel ends another one starts. I keep thinking,
'Maybe I'll try a screen play one day.' That would be fun
because I just enjoy dialogue so much, but then I think about
another novel and I get to work on that. I also have too pretty
young kids, and so there's a lot of other stuff in my life.
Maybe one day I'll have more time. I'm finished the first draft
of the new novel and doing some of the 'researchy' stuff. I kept
putting in the margin, 'research this' and 'research that.' Now
I'm doing the 'work' part. I'm using some stuff from my uncle's
memoirs which has been very interesting."
"The great thing about writing for kids is that they're at such
an interesting and crucial point in their lives. They've spent
their young childhood being fairly certain about who they are, and
now - with adolescence looming - they're peeking around the
corner wondering, 'What's next?'"
Books by Gayle Friesen
Janey's Girl. Kids Can Press, 1998. Grades 6-10. 1-55074-461-5. Hardcover; 1-55074-463-1. Paperback.
*This article is based on a Winnipeg, MB/Delta, BC, telephone
interview conducted on June 28, 1998.
Gayle Friesen
Profile by Dave Jenkinson.
