In Wayland, many students pursue some form of higher education after they graduate, but many others students don’t know what they want to do after college. This often a source of frustration or anxiety. Local author Juliette Fay asks why not knowing is a bad thing.

Local writer Juliette Fay came to Wayland High during Winter Week to talk about her experiences as a published author. Fay wrote Shelter Me, a novel about a recently widowed woman in a small town not unlike Wayland. As the main character, Janie LaMarche, struggles to cope with a personal loss, she finds support from unexpected sources of comfort.

Shelter Me is Fay’s first published novel. A Boston College and Harvard University graduate, Fay originally entered human services and worked in the field for several years. “There was this thing at the back of my head egging me to do something different, and I didn’t really figure that out until about five years ago,” explained Fay, “It took me a while to get to the job that I was meant for.”

She stressed to students the importance of finding work that is right for you, even if that means you are a late bloomer like her, because she has never been happier.  “I know there is a lot of pressure to find a job to sustain you, but you should just really figure out something that you love,” advised Fay. “There is nothing better than getting up in the morning and you can’t wait to get to work. Most people don’t feel that way.”

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Fay explained that even though it took a number of years to find her dream profession, it took practice to get to where she is now. “I read recently that you can be really good at anything you want to do after 10,000 hours of practice,” she said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was getting a lot of practice.”

Fay grew up an avid reader, a fan of all kinds of stories and books, but she especially loved the stories she dreamed up. Using her natural creativity, she would then take real life situations and changed them to her liking. “Maybe I would make it more interesting, or try to find the humor in what had happened. Or maybe if it was sad I would try to make it funny,” she said.

Fay accumulated real life stories, fears, and dreams to create her own stories that would play constantly in her head. “[They] may have been distracting at times but… It’s always been a great way to keep myself entertained,” she said.

Her children do it too. Her youngest son, Quinn, surprised her a few years ago when she was driving her kids around, a typical car ride for Wayland parents. Quinn, who was four-years-old at the time, said, “Mom, have you seen Shrek 4?” She replied, “No, you know I don’t think that is out yet,” and he said, “Yes it is! It is playing in my head!”

The mental practice paid off about five years ago, after Fay finished reading a book she disliked. “It was the thing that made me think, maybe I could do this. This got published, people are paying to read this, so maybe I can do this,” she said. This determination caused her to start writing down the story that had been playing in her head for years, a process took her just one year to complete.

“For me it was an experience like falling in love, because I couldn’t stop thinking about my characters. I would wake up in the middle of the night I was so excited about it,” she said.

Fay then decided to try to find a publisher and was surprised when a big-time publisher picked up the book. But the project got passed down and down to smaller people in the company, until the book got dropped all together. Still, she continued to write throughout the process, and her next story became Shelter Me.

The book is not just a local hit; with over 100,000 copies in print, it is now being translated into Polish and German for readers around the globe.

“[Shelter Me] came from a worry that I had. When I met my husband, I had been in love before, but I had never felt so attached and that really surprised me because I have always been an independent person,” she explained. “And I started worrying about if something happened to him… this nagging little worry made this story.”

As Fay wrote, she found that she created a town much like Wayland, and wrote about many places that people from Wayland would recognize, only with different names.

Junior Ted Sirota found it interesting that the book was set in a town like Wayland and called Shelter Me “because teenagers in Wayland are a little sheltered,” he said.

Fay agreed, and commented, “In some ways that is a good thing because we (parents) want to shelter you from the other things so that you can focus on figuring out who you are; that’s the most important thing for adolescents.”

Fay concluded the event by reading from her newest work, Deep Down True, a story about the three worst years of her life.

To learn more about Juliette Fay you can visit her website at juliettefay.com.