By Dina Di Maio

In truth, I hesitated before showing my mother the book. Not because I was worried she would think she was the mother in it, but because it would give her ideas. Seriously, my mom would never behave the way Ginger's mother does. They do have similarities (they're both Korean and they're both strong-willed women) but I think the most important thing they have in common is what most moms have in common--they love their daughters fiercely and would do anything to help them. Likewise, I think of Ginger as someone separate from myself, but her struggles with her identity and her drive to make something out of her life are things I've certainly experienced in my own life.

I've always worked in features, but I chose fashion for Ginger because I thought it would be entertaining. I know I was entertained the entire time I sat next to the fashion department at a glossy and had a ringside seat to their antics and machinations. It's a fun world--some editors go to Paris to cover the fashion shows, others travel to even more exotic places for photo shoots, they all get designer clothes for free or at a deep discount. It's more exciting than features, but the two departments are similar in that there are far more women who want to work in them than there are positions, which means the office politics can be brutal and the editors can be ruthless. Only the most ambitious survive, and I thought this world was a fitting context for Ginger's story. 

Well, it's not so much characteristics as background that we share. We're both Korean-American, we both work in magazines, and we both dropped out of our Ph.D. programs for English literature. As far as characteristics go, Ginger is really more the dream me: She's taller, prettier, and scored 1560 on the SAT's. So I think I sort of wrote a combination of what I know and what I wanted to find out. After all, if fiction is a form of exploration, you don't want to travel the paths you've already trampled, you want to venture beyond, to the unknown. Yet for a story to be compelling, or for you and the readers to care what happens in a book, it's got to be grounded by reality--and perhaps first-time novelists borrow from their lives because that's the material most readily at hand.

So I didn't go to school thinking that the teachers could teach me to write. I think you can only teach yourself, and that's by putting in the time in front of the computer. It was a help, though, to be in a community of people doing what I was doing and to have the encouragement of professors who were all published novelists.

For In Full Bloom, I didn't do an outline. I just wrote wherever the story carried me. I think that was why I had to do a couple of revises for my agent, and then one for my editor. The arc of the story didn't have a peak; seeds that were planted in the beginning got forgotten by the end, etc. For the next book, my plan is to write the first several chapters and then write an outline. I won't hold myself to it, but I think it'll help to have some kind of scaffolding for the plot.

You also write nonfiction and have written for publications like Glamour, Redbook, Self, Newsweek, Mademoiselle, CosmoGirl, YM.  What kind of writing do you prefer and why?

Of course when I'm at work I'd rather be writing fiction and when I'm writing fiction I'd rather being working on something for the office. Both kinds are challenging in their own different ways. Overall, though, I'd say that I prefer writing fiction. It's more gratifying to write what you deeply care about.

 
What contemporary writers do you read?

When I was writing In Full Bloom, I could only read thrillers, mysteries and the collected letters of dead poets. When I tried to read novels, I would find that I was paying attention to the writing and not the story. These days I tend to read humor: Christopher Buckley, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Helen Fielding. I'm also eagerly waiting for the son of a friend at work to finish reading the new Harry Potter book so I can borrow it.

I do. Part of what I aspire to do as a novelist is to chart the territory of second-generation Koreans living in this time and place—put their experience on the map of fiction. But I also believe that a good book will appeal to readers, no matter who wrote it.

Your book is also very New York.  Anyone who has lived in NYC--regardless if they worked in magazines--can surely identify with Ginger in some way, esp. women.  What is it, in your opinion, that makes the New York experience so unique, captivating and always fresh?