Meet Jessica McCann

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica McCann.

Hi Jessica, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’m a writer. That’s my story.

From my earliest foggy memories, it’s clear I’ve always been drawn to books and words – compelled to gather them, driven to string them together. Some people collect Hummels. Others knit scarves. I collect prose and knit sentences.

My writing life (my entire life) has evolved from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of reading- and writing-related experiences. I remember the regular library trips with my parents as a little girl. I embrace the epiphany of parallelism, learned from my high-school English teacher. There have been countless books read and absorbed, from The Velveteen Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh to The Liar’s Club and The Invisible Mountain. As a journalist, I have interviewed dozens of people who enlightened and intrigued me – neurosurgeons, custodians, CEOs, teachers, politicians, garbage truck drivers, Black Jack dealers and more. As a novelist, I have researched historical events and probed the human psyche. My office files are stuffed with snippets of prose, inspiring statements and beautifully constructed paragraphs written by novices and icons alike. My bookshelves overflow.

Collectively, that’s why I write – to reflect on and make sense of all that I’ve learned and loved and experienced. I share my writing because I believe every one of us endeavors to make sense of it all. Through reading and writing, we learn from one another.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
My career path has been twisty and unconventional.

Throughout school, I was the kid whose heart raced with delight when the teacher announced a book report or persuasive essay, while my classmates moaned and broke out in a collective cold sweat. I didn’t necessarily dream of being “a writer.” It was just something I enjoyed. I loved putting words to paper, playing with them, moving this one here and that one there – like assembling a jigsaw puzzle – until the big picture materialized.

My working life began at fifteen, waiting tables evenings and weekends.

At seventeen, I landed a job in the produce department at Smitty’s, a locally-owned grocery store. It was hard work, which the compensation reflected. My hourly pay was more than three times the minimum wage in those days. It was a good job, and I adored my bosses and coworkers. Smitty’s treated its employees well; many worked there for decades. At the time, I saw no reason to aspire to anything else.

Attending college was never on the radar. My parents didn’t talk about it, and I knew we didn’t have the money for it. My grades weren’t good enough to land a scholarship, and I refused to go into debt. Besides, the only things I loved doing and would have wanted to pursue in college were dancing and writing. Actually earning a living in either vocation was a fantasy that couldn’t be entertained.

At eighteen, I would graduate high school and move into an apartment on my own. My life goals were to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly. A career at Smitty’s would have accomplished those goals.

That mindset shifted during the last few months of high school, thanks to my newspaper class teacher and a unique opportunity offered by St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.

The hospital hosted an annual Young Reporters Press Conference (back in the day when health care institutions had generous community relations budgets). Essentially, a panel of surgeons would line up in a mock press-conference and spout all sorts of technical jargon about the latest medical breakthrough, while several dozen high school kids scrawled feverishly in their spiral notebooks. This was followed by a tour of the hospital and a free lunch.

My newspaper teacher asked our class who would be interested in attending the press conference and three of us raised our hands. There were two slots available. The only fair way to decide who could go was to draw straws. I lost, which no longer seemed fair. So I pulled my teacher aside later and asked what she thought the hospital folks would do if I went anyway, just in case there were any last minute no-shows. She had no idea, she said, but would love to find out and so gave me her blessing to take the day off school.

A day off school and a free lunch. Of course everybody showed.

Luckily, the media relations woman was impressed by my initiative and made room for me. Later in the day, I thumbed through the press kit I’d been given. In it was a Xeroxed flyer soliciting volunteers to write small articles for the hospital’s employee newsletter. It sounded interesting. I started volunteering four hours a week, all I could manage in addition to school and my part-time job. Within a few weeks, she asked what it would take for me to put in more hours at the hospital.

“You’d need to start paying me,” I said with unabashed 17-year-old candor.

So, she did – four bucks an hour.

Thus began my freelance writing adventures. I graduated from high school a few months later and increased my hours at the hospital. I interviewed employees who had worked in the hospital’s laundry facilities for 30 years and neurologists who had saved the lives of world dignitaries. I donned medical scrubs to observe new surgical techniques and furry animal costumes to help educate school children about water and bicycle safety. I wrote dozens of articles about the people I had met and the things I had learned. I was hooked.

Fiction writing didn’t have a role in my professional career until my late-30s. The desire to make up stories had been put on ice in the eighth grade. I had turned in a short-story assignment, and my English teacher gave me a D. He said the story was unimaginative, the ending a cliché, the writing lazy. Thirteen is a tender age, and I was crushed.

Maybe his assessment was accurate. Maybe he was hoping to fire me up and get me to work harder to prove him wrong. Maybe he was a big, mean jerk whose own dreams of being a writer had been crushed by someone else long before. Who knows? All I know for sure is that he trampled my confidence. I had zero desire to write fiction and face such criticism again. Ever.

I focused instead on nonfiction and built a successful career as a journalist and corporate writer. My stable of regular clients ranged from universities and nonprofit organizations to casinos and international corporations.

Once you venture down a certain path, especially when the sun shines brightly upon that path, it’s pretty hard to find the motivation and courage to wander off into the dark scary woods in search of something different. So I stayed with what I knew I could do well, stayed with what was safe.

But safe gets boring after a while.

Much as I enjoy writing for a living, maintaining a freelance business can be tedious work that often includes a whole lot of not writing (networking and client meetings, invoicing and bill collecting, scheduling and proofreading). About the time I hit my five-year anniversary of full-time freelancing, I began to question whether I was still “a writer” or simply an entrepreneur who could successfully string together words. I was bored writing what felt like the same-old things month after month, year after year. My clients still seemed happy with my work, but there was a cloud hanging over me. I felt stifled creatively, felt I was doing my clients a disservice, and felt it would soon catch up to me in a bad way.

I swore I would never let freelancing become my own version of the nine-to-five grind, nor let the business of writing dampen my joy of writing.

So I began using creative writing prompts to draft short stories. The goal was never to publish those stories, or even to let anyone read them. Ever. I just needed to shake things up, to flex my creative muscles and exercise a different part of my brain. Within a short amount of time, a few amazing things happened. One, I began to understand that good fiction writing isn’t a whole heck of a lot different than good nonfiction; two, I dared to believe the stories I was writing weren’t half bad; and three, I remembered how much I loved writing just for fun. Loved. It.

Perhaps inevitably, the idea of a novel started forming in my mind. Then it started forming in a computer document. In its earliest stages, I never believed the novel would ever get published (hoped, perhaps, but not believed). It was just a story I felt compelled to write, and I was enjoying the creative process.

On a whim (and with the hope of winning a few bucks), I entered the first chapters in a few writing competitions as a novel-in-progress. I didn’t win, but I received semi-finalist recognition in two respected contests. That’s when I first started to believe I might have the chops to write a novel that people would want to read.

When the manuscript for All Different Kinds of Free won the Freedom in Fiction Prize, publishing a novel was no longer a crazy dream. It became a tangible goal that I wrote into my business plan. At the age of 40, I landed a literary agent and six months later signed a book publishing contract. I was giddy. Deep down, I guess I’ll always be that kid whose heart races with delight at putting words on the page.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a historical novelist and have worked for 30 years as a professional writer for magazines, universities, corporations and other organizations. My debut novel, All Different Kinds of Free, was awarded the Freedom in Fiction Prize; my second novel, Peculiar Savage Beauty, was named Arizona Book of the Year and shortlisted for the international Rubery Book Award.

In all my writing, I share stories of ordinary people overcoming adversity to accomplish extraordinary things. I have a passion for books, as well as for research that shows how reading books strengthen brain function and improves lives.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Portions of this interview were excerpted from my nonfiction book, WORDS: Essays on Reading, Writing, and Life. If you enjoyed this piece, you may want to subscribe to my monthly email newsletter. It’s bookish and brief, informative and inspirational. Every month includes a fun giveaway — inspirational journals, notecards, signed paperbacks, audio books, literary merch. Subscribe at this link –> https://jessicamccann.com/monthly-e-news-and-give-away/

Contact Info:

• Email: editor@jessicamccann.com
• Website: https://jessicamccann.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmccannwriter/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessicaMcCannNovelist/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JMcCannWriter
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JessicaMcCannNovels

Image Credits
Katrina Shawver
Pam Murphy