- Tell us the story behind the story. How did OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN come to be?
I quit my job at the age of 47 to enroll in an MFA program full-time and to try to write a novel—a strange choice that caused most of my friends to look at me cross-eyed when they learned of it. I have always read obsessively, and like many who are nourished by novels, I quietly harbored the dream of writing one.
My daughter, who has autism and mood disorders, went through a very hard time when she was thirteen, and she (and we) endured a year so volatile that we were left with no choice but to send her to live at a residential treatment center. That gut-wrenching decision, along with the hole that her absence left in our lives when she was gone, forced me to be very intentional about how to generate joy to live alongside the pain. Of course, when you’re sitting at the bar with your middle-aged suburban friend, and he asks you why the hell you would quit a perfectly good job to go to art school, you just say, “It was something I always wanted to do.”
So in 2017 I enrolled at Columbia College Chicago with a fiction cohort who were closer to my children’s age than mine. They welcomed me as one of their own, but most seemed as baffled by my choice as my middle-aged friends. I spent that first semester churning out short stories. As it drew to a close, I sorted through what I had created, and I found that all of the stories featured a distance between a parent and a child. I chose one, and I started to build a novel out of it.
I worked hard. Between school and the novel, I put in 40-50 hours per week. I probably put more effort toward each semester at Columbia than my entire undergrad. I was old enough to know how precious that interlude was, and I refused to waste it. I chose all of my classes based on my goal of writing a novel. I took the Novelists class twice. I focused on the setting of my novel when I found myself in the Travel Writing class. I chose a novelist for my thesis advisor. When assigned to write short stories, I wrote excerpts from OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
Meanwhile, I was inhabiting several worlds. I would write all day, then watch my son’s high school soccer game. I’d sometimes leave the game early to drive downtown for workshop or poetry class, where we’d share our pronouns before we started. Then I’d head back to the suburbs to play men’s league hockey with a slightly less progressive crowd. Every other weekend, my daughter would come home for a visit, and we’d batten down the hatches.
By the fall of 2019, I had completed the novel. I queried 45 agents, most of whom never responded. Seven requested the manuscript and six of those rejected it. By January, I was listlessly assembling character profiles for my next book, wondering whether I should return to the job that I quit, when I was signed by my agent, Harvey Klinger. A week later, he sold the book to Simon & Schuster. Two months later, my daughter came home for good.
2. What was the most challenging aspect of writing OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN?
OPC began as a short story, and I mistakenly thought that starting from that kernel would make things easier. Several difficulties emerged. First, the short story was written solely from Jon’s (the adoptive father) perspective and focused strictly on the grief that he and Gail experienced when the baby they adopted was reclaimed. It quickly became clear that you can’t coax 375 words from that, so the story became much more complex. And a more complex story demands more textured characters.
In the short story, Carli (the birthmother) doesn’t appear much on the page. She’s merely the villain, the girl who reclaimed the baby. Her absence from the short story made her easier to imagine for the novel. I knew her and fell for her as soon as I wrote the first chapter from her POV. Marla (Carli’s mother) and Paige (the social worker) were non-existent in the short-story, so they came easily as well.
Jon and Gail were a different matter altogether. I found it difficult to rework these characters for the novel, because I was attached to their original incarnations. A friend would read a draft and tell me that Gail was indistinct, but Jon came through loud and clear. I reworked all of Gail’s chapters and didn’t touch Jon’s. The next reader told me that Jon was hard to grasp, but Gail jumped off the page. This cycle continued, and Jon and Gail kept demanding more from each other. Is there a better metaphor for marriage?
My thesis advisor suggested that I work to keep the reader uncertain about who they wanted Maya (the baby) to land with until the last possible moment. This was difficult to execute, but excellent advice. It worked well from a story perspective but had the additional benefit of demanding more complexity—strengths and flaws—from all of the main characters. It forced me to take the reader deep into the subjectivity of each. It also shifted the center of the story. Instead of Jon and Gail’s story, it became Gail and Carli’s.
3. What is the message you want readers to take away from your book?
I try to be careful about peddling messages, but it might be useful to share what I think the book is about. My family was going through a very difficult time while I wrote this, and I was adjusting my expectations about what life held for my daughter. In my experience, most people must eventually adjust expectations when life proves unyielding. All of the characters in the book went through this. Some adjusted in ways that were healthy for themselves and for others. Other characters, not so much. Over the last year and half, everyone in the world has had to adjust their expectations, and everyone had to do it all at once. Some adjusted in ways that were healthy for themselves and for others. Other people, not so much.
4. Describe your background. Did your background play a part in your book?
I’m a teacher’s son, and my parents imbued me with a strong work ethic. That led me to become an entrepreneur—I started and sold a company, and then bought and sold a second. But they also taught me to be intentional about interrogating what brings me joy—which led me to quit my job at 47 in order to enroll in an MFA program and try to write a novel. That combination of work ethic and pursuit of passion kept me at the desk for the long hours that it took to write a novel while pursuing my degree.
I’m from St. Louis, as is Jon. Jon and I play on the same men’s league hockey team (The Dumpsters). My wife and I moved to Elmhurst after a decade in downtown Chicago, just like Gail and Jon. We moved to the suburbs a year and a half before our children entered our lives, forcing that same sense of dislocation and not yet belonging that Jon and Gail experienced. Our children are adopted, so I know what it means to wait through that long unpredictable process, and I know what it means to fall instantly in love when they arrived.
5. Describe your writing schedule. Do you outline? Any habits?
I’m a morning writer—I start right after breakfast. I write every workday and take the weekends off. I find that when I’m writing new material, the words tend to blur after about four or five hours, which usually yields about a thousand words, a paltry sum. I write every scene with pen and paper before typing it into the computer. I find that the stakes are lower when I’m just scribbling in a notebook, and that I give myself permission to take more risks. There’s also a bit of magic built into the tactile sensation of writing by hand, and the very first rewrite happens as I type. I can write anywhere, although I have to have music in my ears, and that music cannot have words. Monk and Coltrane and Watson and Scruggs are my writing companions. I usually start without an outline, but at a certain point I create a list of scenes—which I promptly abandon when the characters tell me that the story must go elsewhere.
6. What books are on your nightstand? What are you currently reading?
I’ve recently read LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND (Rumaan Alam), A BURNING (Megha Majumdar), INTERIOR CHINATOWN (Charles Yu), THE FINAL REVIVAL OF OPAL AND NEV (Dawnie Walton), and THE PEARL (John Steinbeck). I’m currently reading Lauren Groff’s MATRIX, and Colson Whitehead’s HARLEM SHUFFLE is on deck.
7. Which authors do you admire?
Some of my favorites include Ian McEwan, Toni Morrison, Frederick Backman, John Steinbeck, Lauren Groff, Cormack McCarthy, Jesmyn Ward, John Updike, Barbara Kingsolver, and Milan Kundera. Good luck trying to find a pattern in that list.
8. What have you learned from this experience?
I’ve learned that writing is re-writing. I’ve learned how to listen with attention and humility to those who share feedback about my work. I’ve learned the joy of fully inhabiting a character’s subjectivity. I’ve learned about the wave of satisfaction that washes over me whenever I hear from a reader who was personally and emotionally touched by my story. I’ve learned (yet again) that the journey matters much more than the destination. I’ve learned that when friends ask me how the writing is going, “It’s going good,” is all they really have the patience for.
9. What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? What is one piece of advice you would give your younger self?
Best piece of advice that I ever received: Hope is over-rated. It tends to project your attention to the future, create anxiety about what you’re hoping for, and keep you from fully living in the present moment. Don’t be hopeless but strive for hope-free.
Advice I would tell my younger self: Be kind.
10. What are you working on now?
I’m writing a novel about four teenagers who kill another boy in a parking lot brawl. They get away with it, but their friendship shatters. Thirty years later, three of them re-unite at the fourth’s funeral. They’re forced to face what they did, even as they address the rot that suppressing the truth of that night has caused in their lives.
About the Author
Jeff Hoffmann was born and raised in St. Louis. He attended Bradley University and then earned an MFA in fiction from Columbia College Chicago. Hoffmann’s writing has appeared in Barely South Review, The Sun, Harpur Palate, The Roanoke Review, Booth, and Lunch Ticket. Hoffmann is the winner of the Madison Review’s 2018 Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction and a finalist for the Missouri Review’s 2019 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. He lives in Elmhurst, IL, with his wife and two children.
Jeff has also published as RJ Hoffmann.
