Interview with Jennifer Freitag

  My guest today is Jennifer Freitag.  Jennifer is an author and a homeschool graduate.
  Jennifer Freitag writes fantasy and historical fiction from her home in South Carolina, where she lives with her husband and two cats. She loves reading, especially obscure old works; she loves her family, and she loves tea. THE SHADOW THINGS, a historical fiction, is her debut novel. If you want to learn more about her, check out her website. (www.jenniferfreitag.com)

 From the back of the book:  The Legions have left the province of Britain and the Western Roman Empire has dissolved into chaos. With the world plunged into darkness, paganism and superstition are as rampant as ever. In the Down country of southern Britain, young Indi has grown up knowing nothing more than his gods of horses and thunder; so when a man from across the sea comes preaching a single God slain on a cross, Indi must choose between his gods or the one God and face the consequences of his decision.

You can pick up a copy of The Shadow Things on Amazon or straight from Jennifer's blog.

1.  Tell us a little about your homeschool experience.  What did you like most about being homeschooled?  What did you like least?

Looking back on it, I appreciate being homeschooled mostly because it brought down the dividing wall between life and learning.  Everyday existence included learning English, history, mathematics, etc., and so the mindset of learning was being built into me from an early age, before I even realized what was happening.  I didn’t always like my subjects—what student does!—but as I grew older and more mature I began to appreciate that I was being taught how to learn, and that is something which has stood me in good stead having graduated and begun to work in the “real” world.

2   You started writing while you were still in school.  What made you decide to sit down and write a book?

I didn’t decide, I just did it!  Because my family, bolstered by the curriculum my mother used, was so book-based, I was always reading stories, whether for school or for fun, and I wanted to make stories of my own and write them down.  So I did, and that expression of creativity was fostered in my home atmosphere so that I was able to hone it to the point of being ready to become a published author.

3.  How did your parents influence or support your writing?  Did your mom count your writing as Composition?

On occasion my mother counted my writing as composition, but let’s be honest: my creative writing endeavours at an early age were not always high-grade material.  I do remember having a clash with my mother over my English textbook: I had written a passage a certain way and defended my position by swearing that C.S. Lewis had used the same type of grammatical composition as I used, but my mother wanted me to use the grammatical rules from my textbook.  She won, of course.

In my early years of writing, my family’s support was more a matter of gentle tolerance.  I didn’t show people my writing, so I never got any criticism, but I was allowed to sit for hours at my computer churning out prose and the most ridiculous plots (if plots they could be called), and I was able to gain a degree of confidence that has carried me through many years of maturing and refining so that now I am able to show people my writing and gain a more personal influence and support from them. 

4.  Do you think being homeschooled has affected how you write and what you write?

No doubt it has.  It is no secret that I am an extremely sensitive person: if I had been put in a public school I would probably not be nearly as confident and self-assured as I am today.  That confidence and self-assurance strongly colours the personalities of my characters.  In being homeschooled, I was able to be myself.  Children are tender, impressionable creatures: without the proper nurturing and the right degree of sheltering in their early years while they get their feet under them, they can lose countless opportunities that might have been opened to them otherwise.  I am very glad I was homeschooled for this very reason.

5.  You choose the unusual path of not attending college and obtaining an English or Journalism degree.  Why?  Do you feel that you missed out on anything by not attending college.

There are two reasons why I chose not to attend college, both of which are very personal.  First of all, I didn’t need it.  Every good author I have read (including C.S. Lewis) has learned grammar and then paid only cursory homage to it.  Having an English degree does not an excellent author make.  I am not at all interested in journalism: it would have been a waste of time and money for me.  Second, as much as I deeply appreciate being homeschooled because of the firm foundation it laid for me, I really hate school.  Having been taught how to learn, and to have the fortitude to do so, I am much happier pursuing my own instruction at my leisure when I need it, where I need it, with no respect to deadlines and term papers.  It has been my experience that, nine times out of ten, creative writing courses in school have been the kiss of death for a student’s interest in writing.

6.  In The Shadow Things you center on the upheaval to Indi's world caused by the arrival of Christianity.  What was your inspiration?

After all these years, with such a flow of stories under the bridge, it is hard to remember clearly the embryonic state of my debut novel.  Church history was always one of my favourite subjects in school, partly because I simply love history, and partly because I love Christianity.  I have always had a fascination with Roman Britain, in which time period The Shadow Things takes place: it was a natural setting for the story I wanted to tell through Indi’s life.

7.  For those of us who don't write, tell us a little about what you do.  Do you research?  Do you write from beginning to end or jump from scene to scene?

Yes, I do lots of research: but I tend to hide my sources and I don’t always tell people what I am using as material.  That’s a key play in the art of a writer.  When I start a new story, I almost always begin writing with an opening scene, but I have typically already been plotting it for months, toying with scenes, sometimes even jotting down dialogue or skeletons of scenes as they come to my mind. 

8.   If you could give homeschooling parents one piece of advice, maybe parents with budding authors in particular, what would it be?

If your child exhibits any talent in any particular area, encourage it!  Being creative and loving one’s work goes far to conquer the grinding humdrum of the corporate machine and should be cultivated as much as possible.  Parents want productive, happy children: encourage them to excellence in the things they love!