Hello readers! I got the chance to interview author, Tiffany Gholar, about her novel A Bitter Pill to Swallow, writing about mental illness, current reads, and more! I hope you all enjoy the interview!
About The Book
Synopsis: On the edge of the Chicago medical district, the Harrison School for Exceptional Youth looks like a castle in a snow globe. Janina has been there since she was ten years old, and now she’s fourteen. She feels so safe inside its walls that she’s afraid to leave.
Devante’s parents bring him there after a tragedy leaves him depressed and suicidal. Even though he’s in a different place, he can’t escape the memories that come flooding back when he least expects them.
Dr. Gail Thomas comes to work there after quitting her medical residency. Frustrated and on the verge of giving up on her dreams, she sees becoming a counselor as her last chance to put her skills to the test.
When he founded the school, Dr. Lutkin designed its unique environment to be a place that would change the students’ lives. He works hard as the keeper of other people’s secrets, though he never shares any of his own. But everything changes late in the winter of 1994 when these four characters’ lives intersect in unexpected ways. None of them will ever be the same.
Q&A Time!
Thank you for agreeing to an interview and visiting my blog! First off, tell me a bit about yourself.
I am a writer, artist, and interior designer. I’ve lived in Chicago all my life.
The funny thing is that my hobbies tend to turn into art projects after a while. For example, I enjoy collecting fashion dolls but have ended up using them in a few photo series now, including one in which I repainted some to create custom dolls of my main characters.
Aside from being a writer, you are also an artist and interior designer. I love your work! What inspires your artwork and what style/mediums do you work with the most?
Thanks! I enjoy making artwork that explores color and a variety of textures and shapes. I started putting recycled materials like cardboard into my paintings to give them more texture and decided to challenge myself to make a whole series of artwork with recycled materials when I was in grad school getting my Master’s Degree in painting. Right now, my primary focus is continuing to make abstract paintings in that style, but I have also created a digital photography series, some collages, and illustrations. In fact, I did all the cover art for A Bitter Pill to Swallow myself, which is why it has four different covers.
What inspired you to write “A Bitter Pill to Swallow”?
A Bitter Pill to Swallow started out as a short story way back in 1993. I was taking a creative writing class during the summer between eighth grade and high school, and daydreaming about various what-if scenarios when I imagined Janina’s situation. I named Devante after my favorite singer in the R&B group Jodeci, which was really popular back then. The trauma that Devante experiences was unfortunately based on a real tragedy that happened in Chicago that I had read about a year or two prior to writing that early version of the story.
When I came back to it later on, my inspiration was to write the kind of story I wanted to read when I was a teenager.
What was the most difficult part about writing “A Bitter Pill to Swallow”?
The most difficult part of writing it was dealing with my own self-doubt. It was a hindrance throughout the entire process. I made the mistake of showing early drafts to the wrong people and taking their criticism personally at times. And that made it hard to continue working on it. Actually, that’s an understatement, as I encountered a few really unkind writing instructors who were cruel about my work. I had a high school English teacher call a short story I wrote for his class (much of which became the first chapter) the first chapter of my “novel” in quotation marks, and a screenwriting teacher who brutally criticized the adapted screenplay of the story in front of the whole class after I rejected his advances.
Eventually I got to the point where I decided to just step away from it and I didn’t come back to it for about ten years. The self-doubt came back when I tried to get it traditionally published and kept getting rejected. Eventually I ran out of agencies to contact and decided to publish the book independently. The editing process was the final test of my self-doubt as a writer as I struggled to decide which suggestions from the editor I hired would be beneficial to the storytelling and which ones undermined what I was trying to accomplish. I ultimately realized (too late) that I had hired the wrong editor but having to push back against her feedback and defend my ideas when she crossed the line forced a clarity of intention that I would not have had otherwise.
Do you have any other recommendations of other books fiction/non-fiction that discuss mental health?
I read a lot of YA fiction about teens who were dealing with mental illness while researching A Bitter Pill to Swallow. My favorites are It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, and I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Hannah Green. Another excellent book in this genre I read recently was I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sánchez. A new nonfiction anthology for teens about mental health that I haven’t read but sounds really promising is (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, edited by Kelly Jensen.
As for nonfiction, one of the best books I came across in my research is Magical Moments of Change by Lenore Terr, which is from the point of view of therapists who work with children and teens and helped me to see things through their eyes and gave me a whole new respect for their profession.
Do you have a set schedule for writing, or are you one of those who write only when they feel inspired?
I tend to prefer to work only when I feel inspired, though when it came to my novel, I actually did make an effort to set aside time to work on it on a daily basis.
What is your motivation for writing more?
One thing that helped me stay motivated to keep writing was thinking about my future audience. As synchronicity would have it, I happened to hear several compelling interviews with teens who have the same names as my main characters during those times when I was struggling with agents and editors. It really helped to put things into perspective.
Are there any books that you are currently reading and why?
I just finished reading Panther in the Hive by Olivia Cole, which is dystopian science fiction. With all the weird things happening in the world right now, it almost seems like a dire prophecy.
About The Author
I am a Chicago based artist working in a variety of media. I have three primary bodies of work:
The Doll Project, Post-Consumerism, and Recessionism. I studied art as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and interior design at Harrington College of Design and hold a Master’s Degree in Painting from Governors State University.
My art has been exhibited in several Chicago area venues, including group shows at The Chicago Children’s Museum and the Chicago Center for Green Technology and solo exhibitions at the Harold Washington Library and The Adler School for Professional Psychology.
I also studied fiction writing at the MFA program at Columbia College. So far I have published one novel, A Bitter Pill to Swallow.
When I am not painting, I work as a freelance interior designer and receptionist. In addition to this, I am a Jeopardy! champion.
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Goodreads
Thanks again to Tiffany for taking the time for a Q&A session and stopping by the blog! Be sure to add A Bitter Pill To Swallow to your reading list!
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This is a great interview! And oh my gosh, those teachers sound horrible! I would have melted into a puddle and never written another word if someone had been so ugly about my writing in front of other people.
Thanks Jenny! I would have too. I did have teachers that were hard on me in English classes, but I realize that they wanted me to do more and saw potential now.