Dynamic Jenny (Jennifer) Gay Albertson, author of 'In Two Minds' and the same novel, entitled 'Embracing Kara', presented herself to an audience of captive listeners at our April meeting. Selecting as her subject, 'How long does it take to write a novel', Jenny likened it to 'How long is a piece of string?'

 

Jenny discussed several of her favourite authors: Shirley Hazzard, author of 'Transit of Venus', and 'Great Fire' who had a gap of twenty years between her first and second novels; Yann Martel, wrote 'The Life of Pi', and then had a writer's block of seven years; Harper Lee published 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' and never wrote another novel, and Jennifer's 'heroine' author, Mary Wesley, who published her first novel in her seventies, went on to write eight more very quickly (one which was made into a TV drama), then decided to stop writing.

 

Beginning in her teens as  a poet, it has taken Jenny a life-time to write her novel. Trained as a copywriter and film-writer for cinema commercials and documentary films, she always knew she had a personal story to tell.

 

Jenny received, in total, three grants form the Australian Film Society to write her story as a film; however, the quantity of input from others meant that she felt she lost ownership of the story's ideas. Finally, after all of her work, the story was rejected.  Her next foray into writing was to learn to write prose. She enrolled at University in a history unit, and before long was writing 17,000 word assignments yet felt uncomfortable with the academic prose form. Her second story attempt began as a memoir; 10,000 words became lost in the computer. Attempts three and four, in journal form and from the point of view of a sister, also failed. She enrolled in a M.A. Research Course at UWA where she wrote her story in the second person singular, (i.e. you, you, you.) A German Publishing firm now want so publish it in that form.

 

She went to the Byron Bay writing festival, put her novel in for the 'pitch' and won a publisher's look at the manuscript. The publisher wanted it re-written in first person, for commercial reasons. it is now with a literary agent in London. Currently she is on the verge of being published in two forms. 

 

Besides her writing interests, Jennifer is a Jungian psychotherapist working in the field of dream therapy. She writes a column for Nova magazine. 

 

Altogether, this was a fascinating look at a very interesting woman and writer.