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by PETER LARSEN ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER In a way, it was the meatball catapult that launched Grant Ginder on his way to becoming a successful novelist, though that wouldn’t come until years after his elementary school experiment went splat. Let the 30-year-old writer explain: “To remember when I went to Moulton Elementary School and they had this thing called the Invention Convention, where all the students had to invent some thing.” Says Ginder, who came home to Orange County last week with a signing at Laguna Beach Books to promote his sec ond novel, “Driver’s Education.” “You could invent something or you could write a story. “I first started to invent things and they were absolutely terrible,” he says. “It would be like a meatball catapult, and you'd have to explain the usefulness of them and mine would be to protect myself from my older brother. “So I went to the other side, which was writing stories, which I absolutely loved.” Loved but didn’t think he was brave enough to make it his career until many years later. After graduating from Aliso Niguel High School, he majored in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, interning for U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, dur ing two summers, one in her Orange County district office, the next in her offices in Washington, D.C. “One of the jobs of all the interns was giving tours of the Capitol, and that was amazing,” Ginder says. “Learning all the facts was great, but that was storytelling, as well. Stories which I probably embel lished a little bit.” After college, he went back to Washing ton to work in the communications de partment of the Center for American Pro gress. Around that time, he started writ ing what would become his debut novel, “This Is How It Starts,” a coming-of-age tale set in D.C. “He gets caught up in the young movers and shakers (and) quickly becomes disil lusioned with D.C. and the politics that happen, not only the surface level and on the Hill but also between friends,” Ginder says. “I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote it. It started off as this fun little thing. I’d send chapters of it to friends and they’d sort of weigh in with, ‘Oh, do this!’ or ‘Oh, this happened to me the other day in Georgetown,’ and so I'd add that in.” He laughs now at how little he knew of publishing at the time. “I literally Goo gled, ‘How many words are in a novel?’ and when I found that most of them had about 80,000 words and I was close to that, I figured, ‘Oh, I guess I better finish this off.’ Ginder also looked online for tips on finding an agent and landed one who got his manu script to Simon Schuster, which published his debut in June 2009. A few months later, he en tered New York University’s graduate program in creative writing, where he went to work on both his master of fine arts degree and the book that three years later arrives as “Driver’s Education: A Novel,” about a young man who works on reality TV shows and sets off on a cross country road trip to return his grandfa ther’s ’56 Chevrolet. Part of Ginder’s inspiration came from his grandmother Jacqueline Greyson, a 90-year-old resident of Laguna Woods. “She used to always tell me these crazy stories about her, my mother, my whole family,” Ginder says. “And my mom would always be, ‘Oh, don’t believe her, she’s to tally exaggerating.’ As a kid, I didn’t care whether they were real or not, I just loved those stories. “Now she can’t remember a lot of things, so I’ll find myself retelling these stories to her, and as I do I can’t resist the urge to embellish them.” The other source of inspiration for the book came from his unabashed interest in reality TV, starting with MTV’s “The Real World” and continuing today with shows such as his O.C. homegirls on “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” “You sort of end up writing the things you're obsessing over,” he says. “Reality TV is this frontier of storytelling. It’s this fascinating, grotesque art form.” “Driver’s Education” connects those strands as Finn, the reality TV editor, his friend Randal and a cat named Mrs. Dal loway (if that sounds familiar, you know your Virginia Woolf) drive from New York City in Lucille, the ’56 Chevy, on their way to San Francisco to deliver the car to Finn’s grandfather. “So there’s this whole storytelling thread from my grandmother to watching reality television,” Ginder says, “and how we as people can’t resist the urge to em bellish things.” DRIVER'S aeral PEA ae There's this whole storytell ing thread from my grandmoth er to watching reality televi sion, and how we as people can't resist the urge to embel lish things.” Grant Ginder, author of “Driv er’s Education SARAH KEARNEY
Newspaper Details
Laguna Niguel News
Laguna Niguel, California, US
Thu, Jan 24, 2013
Page 16
Full Page
Clipped by
Victoria M.
USA 04 Nov 2025
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