By Grace S. , West Jefferson HS Student
Author, podcaster, book saleswoman, and overall fascinating person Mindy McGinnis visited our school on October 24th, 2019. Media Specialist, Mrs. Kearns, scheduled her to come and give 50-minute talks to the middle school and high school about her novels.
Because of this, we all sat in on her presentation. Anybody can google her. I am interested in the discrete parts of her; the person she is behind the jacket photo. I had the opportunity to interview her in between sessions. We talked for 31 minutes about canned tomatoes, meat processing plants, and lobotomies.
I sat with Mindy and my best friend, Cory Ratcliff, at the first round table in the library waiting for Mrs. Kearns to get back from her lunch run. Once she got back, the questions started. Throughout the interview, kids interrupted with books for her to sign and questions about how to make their writing better. She obliged everyone.
First we talked about emotions. Since her books tend to cause so many people cry, I needed to know if she cries when she reads books or watches movies. She said she does, “especially if it’s about dogs,” and that she doesn’t have “a problem with getting completely emotionally invested into something.”
Fall is easily her favorite season. She enjoys the weather, the breeze, and the noises. In true author fashion, she launched into a descriptive rant about her love of the autumnal noises. “Fall has so many sounds. The dead leaves skittering, but also corn, so when the corn is dry, oh my gosh, those noises that it makes. It’s very special and very specific to corn,” said McGinnis. “All of those things, cicadas, bugs...Just even the bugs, everything is different in the fall. There is something about it. It gets me every time. I love it.”
Another thing she loves about the fall is the harvesting season. She is a farmer’s daughter, so fall has been a big farming season for her whole life. Panic is the mindset of the season because there is a narrow window between ripe crops and rotting vegetables that a farmer must straddle. McGinnis has gotten good at walking that fine line. She said, “Controlled chaos is probably one of my organs.”
Most of her stories take place in Ohio. She does this so that every type of kid can see themselves portrayed in a book. “I just like to write about regular people leading regular lives,” said McGinnis. She had been a librarian for five years before she started writing. She noticed a discrepancy in the socio-economic status of the characters in books and the kids reading them. “All the books that were really popular at the time were very much about rich kids and the sons and daughters of movie stars...Those were the books people were reading, those were the books that the kids liked, and they were all about really rich kids with rich kid problems. Where I’m from, we don’t have rich kid problems. [We have an] eighty percent free and reduced lunch kind of situation. I wanted to write a book that reflected their lives.” And so she wrote Not A Drop to Drink.
Her vocabulary when she speaks is obvious of a writer. She used big words such as “vignette”, “populating”, “burlesque” and “percolating” in our lax conversations. She said her favorite word is “circuitous” which means “round and round and round”.
Speaking of favorites, I asked her about her favorite music to listen to. She said she listens to music “all the time”. McGinnis's music taste changes frequently. At the time of this interview, she was listening to music by Caro Emerald. She describes her music as “1920s burlesque music". While that's what she was listening to then, she said that "next week it will be something different."
McGinnis is only still friends with one person from her high school. She went to a small high school similar to West Jeff and remarked how a lot of friendships made in small towns only exist because of the geography. She notes how that changes in college by saying, “When you go to college, you get to pick your friends. Geography isn’t dictating your friends. And the friends you make in college will be your friends for life.
Just like friendships, McGinnis said who a person is can also be dictated by geography. “Take me, and raise me in California, and I’m a different person.” She said she likes the Ohio version of herself because she is, “super casual and I’m really laid back and I don’t worry about much...I’m very country and I like being that. It’s who I am. It’s what I enjoy.”
Another thing McGinnis enjoys is being an author. “I love my job...I love being an author, I’m so lucky that I get to do this. It’s just a blessing.” Thankfully she’s had a good payoff; she has won multiple Edgar Awards and has written many poignant novels.
Even though she loves her job, she finds herself falling victim to procrastination. She said one time she defrosted the deep freezer when she needed to revise one of her novels. She jokes, “I was like, ‘This needs to be done, this hasn’t been done in years. Somebody’s got to do this.’”
She recognized that she is lucky because she has achieved her dream. She advises anybody who wants to have a career in the arts to “make that your plan B.” This tough love advice sounds bad, but she concedes, “You have to eat and you have to have a roof over your head and you have to pay your bills. And art, unfortunately, does not do that for 90% of the people that produce it.” That being said, she believes that it is worth it to follow your dreams.
One of the best parts of any Mindy McGinnis novel is the diverse and developed characters. In one of her most popular novels, The Female of the Species, even the “bad” characters still have humanitarian and likable traits, most notably Branley. McGinnis said she didn’t mean to make Branley that human when she first started writing the book. “Branley became a real person and I think it says a lot that it wasn’t my intention. She did it. And that made me think. What was I going to do? I was just going to write a dumb cheerleader? No, she wasn’t going to let that happen.” She creates her characters, but they teach her lessons.
This article physically can’t cover every topic Mindy and I dove into; it would literally be 10,000 words and we would be here for years. Mindy McGinnis is like the cool wine aunt that your mom doesn’t want you to talk to at family events because she speaks too much truth. I would do anything to have her be my aunt. I’m not kidding.