Novelist Dawn Tripp and I talk candidly about writing, angst, obsession and inspiration

Recently, I met the author Dawn Tripp (whose third novel, Game of Secrets, will be out in 2011). We met on Facebook. We instantly hit it off, and we began having a series of conversations about writing that was so intense, so exhilarating, that it felt as if the world had suddenly changed. I wanted to reprint the whole thing here so that other writers could join the conversation if they wished. So here, reprinted in all its glory, is our talk about writing, obsession, inspiration and more, starting with the Facebook status update that began the conversation:

Caroline Leavitt likes the look of 167 pages of a first draft, but she'd like 350 even better--so back to work.

Dawn Tripp

At some point I am going to have to go a little deeper into this, because I never have 167 pp of a first draft until I have nearly written the novel, because I write long-hand in notebooks and more often on teeny tiny thoroughly disorganized pieces of paper that I have to transcribe into my notebooks within 48 hours or I have difficulty reading my own scrawl, so your ability to map your progress in such a methodical, measurable way makes you something of a hero to me. For that and for those red suede cowboy boots!

Caroline Leavitt

Ah, but Dawn, this doesn't count the years of mind-exploding prep work I've been struggling with! I have been wanting to write this novel for four or five years and simply couldn't figure out how, and I must have thrown away 500 pages (no joking!) and a thousand false starts, before I finally sat down with a really smart writer friend and begged her to let me tell her the story so she could point out the holes. As soon as I did that, as I began to talk about it and she began to ask questions, the novel unlocked and I figured out what it was about. Of course there is still tons and tons of stuff to do, but I cling to my synopsis (it's my little engine that could) and feed myself chocolate!

And also, I'm totally obsessive-compulsive. And my handwriting is totally illegible! (I laughed when you said you had to transcribe within 48 hours!)

Dawn Tripp

I am quite sure I throw away several hundred pages for each novel. I've never actually kept track, but I am quite certain. For GAME OF SECRETS, there was a main character; he was my road in to the world of the story, but once I was in, he became extraneous, so he ( all of his material) was ultimately cut. It was one of those things I knew in my gut 6 months before I'd let my mind know it.....so tell me this: the mind-exploding prep work, is that handwritten? or do you do that on the computer? What does it look like? See to me, that IS the work. Don't you think? What comes after is just stringing the beads together, setting the pieces into their interlocking place, whatever metaphor you want to use....

Caroline Leavitt

Dawn, such great questions--it forces me to figure out my process. It starts handwritten. I write the main idea/character that's obsessing me and then just make big messy notes about it and him/her for months and months. (It IS indeed the work). Then I get on the computer. For me, if I have a good first chapter, that's my lifeline. I can't move on until I do, because I need it when I am in the middle and it all seems like junk writing. That first chapter is what keeps me from quitting.) I usually show the chapter to some writer friends, so that keeps me from junking everything, too. I continually do grunt work: character maps, character arcs, story arcs, synopsis, Truby story structure (even though, it's mostly for scripts, it can be helpful figuring out problems), and of course I whine, cry, carry on, obsess and panic at every turn.

But even at the stage I am now, where I sort of know the main through line and things are sort of mapped out, I continually do those arcs and synopsis, which change every week (but not on a major level anymore!)

Dawn Tripp

So fascinating. And for me, this one point that is altogether different: I rarely write my first chapter until the novel is done, but if I don't have my ending easily and early on, I don't have a book. Learned that the hard way twice. Talk about tossing some pages (and years).

Caroline Leavitt

Oh I agree with you, Dawn. I also have to know my ending--it makes it easier when you are writing toward something. With Pictures of You, I had my first chapter, and then halfway through, I started writing my last chapter--it surprised me, but when I wrote it, it suddenly made the novel make sense. I wish that would always happen. Do you outline, Dawn? There is still, for me, so much discovery to be made. My outlines are really just the basic dramatic line--the question the novel is asking and possible ways to ask it. I know John Irving outlines every line. I sort of know vague directions and for me the pleasure is getting there and figuring out the best way. But also, I'm really pretty neurotic, and this method seems to ease my panic!

Dawn Tripp

Yes. But like you, I let the outline change if it needs to. I try to keep it fluid. Of course that can be challenging, because once you set a map in place, you have this sense of obligation to follow the map. Like I said before, sometimes I need a device, a character, a scene even, to find my way in, or to go deeper, or into some undercurrent, but then that scene or character or device that got me there, may or may not still be necessary. I find that an outline emerges at a certain point in the writing--in the longhand, notebook, illegible scrap of paper kind of writing--when the outline coming into focus, that is often the point at which I move my work from the page to the screen. Sometimes when I have a gap in my outline, I push to figure it out with my brain, and that is almost always a mistake. It's best when I can just leave it open. If I can just leave things open, often something better than what I could have done with my mind, comes forth. I know writing is supposedly 90 percent sweat work or whatever, but i-n-s-p-i-r-a-t-i-o-n I think is grossly underrated.

As is the work that takes place in the dark: that curious melding of all the little scraps and bits and elements that live the other side of daylight, yet that stuff is distilled, ultimately, through the filter of the mind/the intellect. Writing is particular as an art form. You can't entirely drop your thinking mind to create. I have read so many letters of visual artists that I love and they often will describe that sense of dropping their mind as they create, moving into color, form, moving into a space of no words, but as writers, words are our medium, and the intellect of course is a tool, and yet the best writing, that writing that is ALIVE, comes from an altogether different place.

Dawn Tripp

One more quick question from me, Caroline: have you ever had writer's block? I am guessing 'no.'

Caroline Leavitt

Hi Dawn, I used to have it all the time but then I discovered I had to plan ahead for it, by having other projects in the wings. And I do indeed have days when I can't write, when the stuff is junk, but I've taught myself that that usually means my subconscious is brewing and the next day something will happen. I always try to have another idea in the back of my mind because I tend to panic about what the fuck I'm supposed to do when I finish this particular novel?

Dawn Tripp

I always have to have another idea in the back of my mind for when I finish a book. And yes, of course, I have days of not writing, many, but I actually never call that 'writer's block,' so maybe it's a question of semantics. I tried once to finish a novel and have nothing afterward. I thought I was going to lose my mind. Everything felt so dead. I am not balanced unless I am living with one foot in another world. Which seems absurd. But it's how it is. :)

Caroline Leavitt

Dawn, this is so fascinating to me! Would you mind if I collect our responses and put it on my blog as Dawn Tripp and Caroline Leavitt talk about writing?

I know that feeling--of not having anything to write and feeling dead inside. I've always somehow known that writing is the one thing that has kept me sane and happy. I just load myself up on things I have to do, and I've found that since I started doing synopsis and arcs and etc., it's much easier to avoid that "oh my god" stage. But I do remember being pushed to write a novel by my then publisher who wanted something "Commercial." I never felt in the zone for the whole writing of it. It was a horrible experience and the book got horrifically bad reviews before it died. I've learned I have to somehow feel some very personal connection and obsession to the material.

Dawn Tripp

Obsession I think is the term. I have often said this at readings: there's that old adage: write what you know. I don't buy it. I believe you need to write what you have passion for, what you are inspired by, what you want most, dread most, what you love, fear, hope, crave, desire, what MOVES you. No matter how it moves you. You have to go there.

And yes, that would be super, you can absolutely collect our responses, for this and as well, if you like, the exchange with Joe, all of it fits together. I just moved to messages, because somehow asking about writer's block always feels a little taboo--it's private you know. I don't like to say that I don't get it. I feel like I will jinx myself. I am absurdly superstitious. I only write in one kind of notebook. I have to order them. I order 14 or so at time. (nuts isn't it? )

But this conversation is inspiring to me. I could care two little whits that I have completely disregarded my copyedits for this past hour. This is a complete joy.

Caroline Leavitt

Yes, obsession. I get nuts when my students at UCLA tell me they are trying to write for the market or for their readers. I say write the book YOU are desperate to read, write about the things that totally obsess YOU and then it will be universal. And ditto with you have to go there. It's funny, but I never, ever wanted to write about my childhood asthma--too full of grief and shame and emergency rooms, but it somehow found its way into my novel, and now that seems one of the things early readers/critics are responding to--and it ended being one of the questions I was most obsessed about.

I'm with you on superstition. I actually have lucky earrings and choosing a pair every morning (I have about 75 pairs now) is tight rope walk because I never know when the luck in them might change!

Dawn Tripp

Oh, that is so funny! I used to wear a necklace. Some girls I taught made it for me--it was lovely--their mom is an artist, and it is melted glass, but the girls designed it and I wore it a while, but then it didn't feel right, felt off, like it was making me off--which of course makes no sense but who cares--and my mom bought me an opal necklace, that I thought I loved, and I wore it one day and my son got a fever, and so I took it off and never wore it again, and for a while, I wore my son's turtle necklace, until he asked for it back. And now I wear nothing around my neck. And all my luck seems to be in a better place (but of course I should never say that out loud, or worse, on FB) xxx

Caroline Leavitt

That is hilarious! I'm the exact same way! I wear a necklace my son gave me when he was four (it's really pretty--a tiny little red (my lucky color) bead on a cheap chain) but earrings--well, they just turn on you, don't they!

I'm so suggestive--a perfect candidate for hypnosis and I admit I tend to believe anything incredible (spirits in the house? you bet! )

Dawn Tripp

The other piece about obsession: you can find things that obsess your mind. That your mind is desperate to explore, and move into. And you can write well. But the stuff that is best, is the stuff that comes from that elsewhere--call it heart, gut, soul--call it the muse that lives in the walls. Sometimes it is secret. Sometimes it is the thing you don't look at straight on, because looking at it straight on, hurts, or shame, or scalds, like looking into the sun, but even if it is secret, that doesn't mean it doesn't write its way in. And the best writing, I feel, from outside mind. I can look through my novels and find those pages. There is one character in my new book, which I hope will be reaching you soon--I know they are sending, sorry it has taken so long--and he was like wild horses, that's what he was. Came into me, out of me, from I don't know where. And he may not be the character a reader loves most. I dislike so much about him. But he is the one my heart broke for.

Now, one more little story before I go to pick up my boys. After I finished my second novel, SEASON OF OPEN WATER, I did what any good writergirl would do, and embarked upon my third. And I never had the ending. And I wrote for two years and four pages, and then read the book through one day, and said 'oh dear, this is a bit dead.' And I sent it to my editor, and she had a similar assessment. 'You can do a lot of things to a book, but it's quite hard to put in a heart.' Ouch. But she asked me what I wanted--did I want to try to go back and rework?--sure, I said, but by the way, there is this other thing, that I can't stop thinking about, this other idea, that keeps me awake; I'm a bit feverish, feel like I have the flu, it's just a little idea, but here, let me tell you, because I have to tell you, because I can't really stop thinking about it, because it seems to have set me slightly on fire."

And so I told her the idea, and I know it wasn't the idea she fell in love simply, it was how obsessed I already was without really even knowing I had already lost my heart to a world and a story I had barely begun to conjure. So that became the next book. And Winter Man (the four hundred pages/two years/slightly dead thing) is under the bed. (along with one other I will admit), and it was a fabulous title. The Winter Man. Which was the only part of leaving it that I still seem to regret. :)

Dawn Tripp

I knew that GAME OF SECRETS was a good book, even before it was done, because my heart broke for four years while I was writing it. The flu symptoms continued--not all the time, but intermittent--and that feeling of my heart breaking, over and over again. I don't read my work when it is finished. Do you? I am almost afraid to. (another crazy dawnism)

Caroline Leavitt

I LOVE all this, the obsession, the flu, your heart breaking. I can read my own work, but the funny thing is, I ONLY do it when I am stuck in present work, as if to prove to myself, you did this before, you did this before.

Oh my God, this is fun!

Dawn Tripp

Oh, that is so fascinating. When I am stuck in present work, I read poetry, mostly, not mine--mine is a closed room, only I go again. But other poetry--favorite poets--or I go back and read books that have moved me, really moved me. But it is for the same reason: to remind myself who I am.

Caroline Leavitt

You have no idea how excited I am by this whole conversation. I feel the neurons firing in my head!

Caroline Leavitt

Oh yes, here are some questions--I'll put it up next week. Love this idea.

Do you find that certain themes and ideas find you? (I find that my obsessions do lead me to ideas, but there are surprises, like my writing about the shame of childhood asthma)

How does a novel start for you? With a character, an image, or a question? (I usually have a question--how do we really know the ones we love? Why do we see only what we want to see? How do we forgive the unforgivable? I hold onto that question with an iron grip, because it seems to lead to plot for me and character development.)

Do you have problems reading other authors while you write? (I used to until I began reviewing, then I had to learn to compartmentalize very strictly, so I wouldn't be influenced by other writers' ideas.)

Who do you show your work to and at what stages? (I have about 3 writer friends I count on to tear things apart. They all have different sensibilities. My husband reads last--)

How do you handle the constant nagging insecurity about what you are doing? (I've learned to just notice it and let it go. I can't seem to cure myself of it and there are moments when I read someone else's book and feel sick with grief that I have not written it.)

Dawn Tripp

Themes and ideas do find me. Yes, of course. I don't set out to write a novel about a given theme. It's the story that compells me. The characters. And the world they inhabit. Their landscape--their natural world, but also their emotional, psychic, relational terrain. But over and over, ideas and themes, connections will surface in my writing that I was not consciously intending. I am sometimes not the person who makes this discovery. There was a critical discovery in GAME OF SECRETS that was made by one of my editors at Random House after I turned in an early draft. She said: 'why didn't you make this more explicit?" And of course, I had no idea that it was even surfacing there. Now, it's been developed. And it's an engine for the story. One of the secrets, though, I can't tell you what it is.....

Dawn Tripp

I love that you start with a question. That reminds me of Rilke, what exactly was it he wrote once: try to love the questions themselves.

Novels for me almost always start with a character--who takes up residence with me (and my family, to my husband's slight chagrin); and there is so much discovery, and it is wild, those early days of a novel--like falling in love, all discovery. So much stumbling around in the dark, writing into the unknown. There is often a scene, or rather, a fragment of a scene, but there is a feeling to it, a heat, a drive, it's driving me, and that is how I know it will work. I only write novels. I don't write short pieces. So it has to have a lot of heat, that first idea, that first glimpse, to be the kind of engine that I need. I also am aware that there are things I know about these characters... and there are things that are still dark for me. And then there is other stuff too, leaking out, --what I wrote about in our FB conversation--about how those scraps and bits what live the other side of daylight, get filtered through the mind, and gradually honed....

Dawn Tripp

It is difficult for me to read other author's while I write. But I will take conscious breaks throughout the year--two weeks or so--when I will still take handwritten notes on my novel, but I won't technically 'work.' And then I read. I read like I am starved. I have already set aside a week in January 2011 to read Pictures of You.

Dawn Tripp

I am extremely protective of my work when it's raw. Because that's what it is, and that's what I am around it: raw. I also have three readers who read my work when it is complete, before I send it to my agent, or editor. And I will usually work through a draft or two, before I send it off to NY. They each have their blind-spots, but I have been working with the same three for so long that I know what those blind-spots are. All three are able to take a given piece of my work on its own terms, a quality that, to me, is crucial. My husband is one of those three. He is an amazing reader. He will feel things in a book when it's in a rougher stage--a potential, an opening, a possibility. He'll say to me: what if she did this, instead of this? He has keen keen instincts, and a strong sense of story, and when things are good, they ring in him, and if they don't ring, I'm in trouble, or at least I need to take another look. I didn't know this when I met him. I just lucked out.

So you know, I went to pick up my boys and then swam in the river and I was thinking about your comment--about the neurons firing--and how curious it is, because I know this: although writing is so solitary a pursuit, there is this magical synergy that can take place when your mind meets a like mind and this kind of conversation can take place.

I had a thought and feel free to take it or disregard--why don't you pull together what you want, out of our various conversations today, pull it together into a conversation form, as you want to see it--feel free to pick and choose from what I wrote and then, if you don't mind, shoot it to me, so I can edit my thoughts, and add a line in here and there if it makes sense. When I said I write on little scraps of paper, I do. that's where most of the energy, most of the raw fire in my work takes place--on this slips of paper that can be so easily thrown away. That's what keeps me free.

Dawn Tripp

I realized this morning, as I was in the car, driving (yes, where so many of the best ideas slip through), that I had not responded to one of your questions-the last one--about 'how do you handle the nagging insecurity about what you are doing?'

This is how it is for me, Caroline: the insecurity does not dog me, most of the time. Writing, I believe, is an act of faith. Faith that you can dive into nothingness, led only by a glimmer or a spark, and out of nothingness, that blank page, create a thing of beauty or heartbreak, a world. Faith that there is something you have to say that is unique and is worth saying and if it has been said before--as most great things have--it will be rendered, by you, by your words, new. Faith that what you do, alone in your room, at your desk, at your keyboard or with your pen against the page, will move someone else. Will make them feel, even if only slightly, more alive, more awake to their own life. All of that said: Faith is nothing without doubt. And there are times--like I say, it doesn't dog me, but there are times-- when I ask myself if it matters--this thing I do. And it can be caving, that kind of doubt, but it can also push me to question: am I doing in my work, on the page, all that I can do? Am I taking a risk? Enough of a risk? Am I writing something original, meaningful? Or am I writing safe? Am I shying away from some dark I am meant to walk into, some dark a given story, or a given moment in a story, is intended for? And when I read another writer's work and love it and wish that I had written it, is that because I am not somehow letting myself be as free as I am meant to be? To be honest: those questions that come out of the doubt drive me, although it aches when you are in it. At the end of the day, Caroline, writing for me is not a choice. From the time I was five, it's what it is what I have done. It is how I make sense of the world.

Read This Book: Elizabeth Brundage's A Stranger Like You

Elizabeth Brundage (author of The Doctor's Wife and Somebody Else's Daughter) emailed me to ask if I'd be interested in a book that combined dark character study and the world of film. (That's like asking me if I like Junior Mints!) I knew and admired her previous novels, and this one, A Stranger Like You, which pubs today (order or buy wherever books are sold!) is truly wonderful. I'm pulling out all the best adjectives here: quirky, dark, full of unexpected surprises, and oh yes, a wonderful, thorny portrait of Hollywood. Thanks so much, Elizabeth for offering to do this.

I loved how the story fit together, which I think might owe something to your screenwriting abilities. How hard is it to switch gears from novel to script? Do you prefer one format over the other?

I much prefer writing novels to screenplays and I think that being a novelist is more like being the producer and director of a film in that you have complete control over the eventual product. There are few limitations in fiction – you can create an entire world without having to think about what it’s going to cost to make it “real.” What interests me about writing fiction in particular is how the words take effect on the reader, almost like a drug, and the reader succumbs to the story (we pray) and invents the narrative in his or her own mind, thus taking an active role in its creation. That really interests me, because I don’t believe that reading is necessarily passive. Going to see a film perhaps is more passive than reading a book, because you are being fed the images. In reading a book, one brings one’s mind to it, creating pictures to go along with the story and in some instances mustering a host of important memories to assist in decoding one’s feelings about what is taking place. Therefore, reading a novel is a fairly active experience when compared to watching events unfold in a movie – although movies are marvelous, magical creations, there is something incredibly satisfying about holding a book in your hands, the quiet intimacy that evolves between the writer and the reader.

I also love, as a novelist, the sense of really knowing a character. A character can take up residence in a writer’s mind for months or years – often several years – until the writer can properly translate his or her story. I truly believe that writers are translators….first the story is whispered into our ears. We have to decipher the spirit’s language and translate its emotions. I like researching a character’s life, attempting to create that sense of authenticity on the page.

Before the first page there is one shocking page, all in caps, about what emotions and feelings lead to others. (Greed leads to destruction, decadence leads to ruin). Based on a screenwriting character’s theories about how one thing leads to another, it seems to echo through the novel for me, but I wanted your take on why that page is there, and why in caps.

In life, one thing generally leads to another – the same goes for a script or a novel. Ever since the Brothers Grimm and I suspect before that, consequence has played a role in story-telling. I began my writing career as a screenwriter and studied at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles where the first order of business for all the screenwriting fellows was to understand what a premise was, and why it was so essential to have one in your screenplay. Life is not without consequence. A character confronts a challenge and changes as a result, or, at the very least, meanders toward some resolution. The page of “premise tags” at the beginning of the novel comes from that fundamental construct and sets the tone for the thematic underpinnings of the story. So too, the headings for each part of the novel are screenwriting terms, for example: Suspension of Disbelief, which refers to the viewer’s submission to the unfolding story, setting aside the reality of what might be actually possible, which, in the context of the novel, ties into the idea that, in life, your destiny, to some degree, depends upon your perspective, your trust, and your ability to accept mystery or to rely on fate.

You’ve tunneled so deeply into the character of Hugh Waters, who makes his life a terrifying facsimile of his script, that I’m wondering what it was like for you to inhabit someone so disturbing for so long.

It’s funny sometimes being a writer. Your characters surprise you. They remind you that, on some basic level, we all have the capacity for weirdness and evil. I do believe this is true. Hugh Waters first came to me after I received a nasty review on my first book, The Doctor’s Wife. I was an innocent at that point and I felt so violated by the reviewer that I couldn’t help taking it personally. Those feelings fermented for a while – years passed – and low and behold Hugh Waters was born, hell bent on revenge. In writing Hugh, I wanted to explore how a guy who’s not quite the sum of his parts – not quite in sharp focus or full color – a hue – transparent as water – begins to fill in. And when that happens, when he begins to understand the true dynamics of his power, he becomes a very dangerous individual.

I think nearly every writer takes some tiny aspect of his or her life and uses it, exploits it, challenges it, then shapes it into art. In that first novel, the character of Lydia Haas goes completely mad. We were living in Richmond, Massachusetts at the time, in a wonderful old farm house, and she had pretty much possessed me. When I was inside the house, I looked mad – but then I’d have to go pick up my kids at school and do the marketing and would somehow get her to simmer down while I was in my real life – so that nobody would think I was…well, mad.

I wrote A Stranger Like You in a rented house in Williamstown, MA, that had very little furniture in it and just this tiny TV – there was nothing to do but work and it was a good thing and this book just poured out of me in a kind of frenzy. I’m glad I wrote it quickly because, when it was done, I was very glad to get rid of Hugh Waters.

I loved the three voices, the screenwriter, the studio exec who fights to make the kinds of films she wants (which has a price tag) but I also loved how deeply sympathetic each was in their own worlds. They each want to prove that they can be someone, in particular a hero in their own worlds, but once you buy into a certain life, do you think it’s possible to escape it?

That’s a good question and I’m not sure I have the answer to it. I don’t believe anyone can fully ignore their past. I like that you picked up on the fact that each character has their own idea about what a hero is – I tried to present the question about what a hero is and how there’s always a hero in a Hollywood movie. I think that’s true. I think it’s an American phenomenon. We celebrate heroes, even unlikely ones, and they are somehow essential to who we are as a nation. And yet I suppose most nations rely on heroes (or dictators – or villains) in order to define or characterize themselves as countries. When I first met Sean, the Marine who helped me to shape the character of Denny Rios, I knew within the first five minutes of interviewing him that he was a hero. There was just no doubt in my mind. He’d been to Iraq with the first invasion in 2003 and he’d seen things – he’d done things – that we couldn’t discuss; I knew not to ask. There are some things that you don’t talk about with veterans because what happens during war may be out of the realm of ordinary behavior – it is something else entirely and difficult to put into words. Even if you can imagine it in your own mind, it’s not the same as saying the words out loud to a stranger. I respected that. But still – there is some quality that I saw in each of the vets I spoke to. It was a kind of emotional scalding, I felt, that they had each experienced. It’s hard to explain. In the novel, Denny Rios is in the throes of PTSD when we meet him – he can’t quite shake the images of horror that he carries around inside his head. And it’s not until he meets Daisy, a teenage runaway, that he can challenge his demons and begin to let them go. As heroine, Hedda Chase, grappling with her own ideals, agrees to make a film about an Iraqi woman who is stoned to death, knowing that it will be a risky venture that could, quite possibly, diminish her status in the industry and ultimately change her life. Hugh Waters asserts himself heroically when he, in a gesture of paternal compassion, attempts to help Daisy and, later, when he assumes the role of a terrorist – but his version of heroic behavior could be interpreted as psychopathology – it all depends on your perspective, your values, your religious beliefs – and this is, at least in my mind, the heart and soul of the novel.

I absolutely adored all the insider tidbits about Hollywood and Filmmaking. I’m hoping you are going to say you exaggerated, but did you?

I don’t think I exaggerated. Of course my take on Hollywood is subjective – watch one episode of Entourage and you’ll see sexist – even though it’s a terrific show. They know it’s sexist, but that doesn’t mean the business will change, and I’m not sure that a few key women in powerful roles designates real change either, although it helps – it is certainly a step in the right direction. When you talk about sexism it’s a big subject and you can’t attribute blame to either side because we all contribute to sexism, men and women alike – we are all responsible for the way things are. Partly because of how we were raised, partly because of what we see all around us, the advertisements – the way women are encouraged to dress or act – the way men are pushed to project a kind of resolute strength – the reality that seeing a woman undressed is fairly routine. It’s a huge, multi-layered subject and, again, it has a lot to do with perspective. I wanted to talk about sexism in Hollywood as part of a larger conversation about the global perception of women. I wanted to consider the war in Iraq as a kind of theater – a very expensive production – machinated by a strategic few. I’m not convinced that it is possible to negotiate for peace with a country that condones and even encourages husbands to beat their wives when they “disobey” them – not to mention stoning a woman to death as a practice of law. To even imagine for one moment that our Americanism, our diplomacy – the freedom we so proudly champion – might influence and even change behavior that has prevailed for generations is preposterous and foolish. I don’t believe it is possible to negotiate when there are such profound philosophical differences such as these between nations. I don’t believe that either side can relate on any score to the other. War is, of course, not the answer, because even war can’t influence the core issues that motivate the behavior. But perhaps I am too cynical. In any case, these are some of the ideas I wanted to explore in the novel.

What’s obsessing you now in your work?

I’m obsessed with a murder case that has gone unsolved for over twenty years.

What question didn’t I ask that I should have?

What do I want readers to know about my work? I want readers to know that I’m trying to write a different kind of thriller – one that reads like a literary novel, but moves at the pace of drugstore pulp. I don’t like the word “genre” because I think it undermines what I and many writers are trying to do. I don’t ever want to be pushed into a publishing category. I don’t want to limit myself to one kind of writing. I want to write every kind of story – thrillers – love stories – science fiction – great literary epics! Writing is an art, but it is also a craft – it is a practice – it is something that must be done day after day and it never really gets any easier. Starting over is starting over, plain and simple. You must confront the white page and in doing so you are confronting many things at once, many problems, few of them easy. It’s important to experiment, to try new things. Writing is this: words on the page. That’s all it is. You don’t need batteries to turn it on.

Read This Book: Beth Kephart's Dangerous Neighbors

Beth Kephart's A Slant of Sun was a finalist for the National Book Award. She's written countless books for young adults, and poetry, and her latest, Dangerous Neighbors, about loss and love, was mesmerizing. (Plus, I have to add, she's hilarious and warm.) Thank you, Beth, for answering my questions.

What were the challenges of setting your book against the 1876 Centennial? Do you enjoy research or did it make you feel as if your head were about to explode?

I smile at the question, for it is a great one, as all of your questions are. The truth of the matter is that my greatest challenge lay in caging my obsession with this era so that I would not overwhelm readers with the high parade and cutting details of a time and place that I love. I did not study English or writing at the University of Pennsylvania (or anywhere else, to be honest). I studied the history and sociology of science—cities, technologies, the thrusting forward of time.

The Centennial was such a high note in my city’s past. Ulysses Grant was there. Walt Whitman. The emperor and empress of Brazil. The first kindergartner teachers. Profoundly fierce feminists. George S. Childs, the greatest philanthropist Philadelphia has ever seen. Caroline, it was irresistible stuff. My head wasn’t exploding. My heart was.

The book begins, astonishingly with a young girl, devoid of all hope, planning on killing herself because her beloved twin has died, and you set it in the midst of the Centennial, which seems emblematic of hope itself. What sparked this idea?

Another confession: When I first started writing this book, I had the idea of telling the story through the vehicle of the Shantytown fire that plays such a pivotal role late in the tale (and in real life threatened to destroy the Centennial grounds). I had previously written and published an autobiography of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, Flow, and I loved living with the river as soul-bearing narrator.

In this case, the fire did not work as a narrator (too angry, too one note, too contained to see enough of the story), but the characters that the fire had glimpsed in early drafts—Katherine, the bereft twin, and William, the boy who rescues lost animals for a living—were compelling, demanding, commanding. That said, I only write characters whose inner lives are familiar to me. Katherine, in Dangerous Neighbors, is a character I wholly understand—the responsible one, the less-than-glamorous one, the one who never has figured out how to forgive herself. As I started to get to know Katherine, to shape her, I felt blessed by the possibilities that the Centennial backdrop offered. World futures versus personal ones. Technology versus the soul. Sweeping, generalizing promises versus the promises sisters make to one another. And, as you mention, hope versus hopelessness.

What were the challenges of writing a YA as opposed to an adult book? In your end notes (which I loved), you talked about the “gritty faith” required to keep you going. Although as a novelist, I know far too well what you mean, would you talk more about it here?

I have always tried to write outside of category—to write books for any age, to transcend. In my teen books, my protagonists are smart, soulful, thoughtful, and language steeped because this is exactly what I experience in the young people to whom I teach writing, or with whom I spend time. I refuse to write “down,” because I look up to teens. I, in fact, adore them. YA does require one to move a story faster, and of course, being the poetic, meditating, memoir-writing type, I need that kick in the literary butt.

Dangerous Neighbors could have gone in either direction—to an adult house or to a YA house. It went with Laura Geringer and Egmont USA for many very excellent reasons. Chief among them, however, is this: Laura (with whom I had worked at HarperTeen) and Egmont chose to believe in this book. They said, among themselves: Yes, it is an historical novel, and yes, it is literary, and yes, wouldn’t it be lovely if Beth Kephart had a larger following, and nonetheless, Yes. We will buy this book. They made a choice, they took a risk, I stood out here hoping against hope, gritting my teeth, scanning the skies for smoke signals, and my hopes were answered.

Egmont USA did not just buy this book. They have supported it in ways I’ve never been supported before; they have made me feel like family. It is a heck of a beautiful way to have one’s very lonesome faith answered. A few years ago, it seemed I’d written or, at least, published, my last book. Then Laura returned to my life and she brought Egmont with her, and I was given another chance.

The novel meditates on what it means to have “dangerous neighbors” or to feel lost in a new country (or new way of being) where everything is so rapidly changing. There is also the sense that Katherine wants ownership of her sister in terms of loving her. She wants to keep that world small, even as the world around her--and her sister's world--are expanding. In the end, despite the losses in the book, Katherine actually finds surprising connection and hope. (There’s a spectacular few scenes of her carrying a stranger’s baby all over the Centennial.) Even though this novel is set in 1876, the whole idea of dangerous neighbors is remarkably current to me. Would you agree or is this simply my own interpretation speaking?

I think it is your high intelligence speaking. I wanted to write history that feels like right now. To make it pressing, to make it urgent, to make it relevant. These characters might wear different clothing, and they might walk through places that no longer exist, but they love like we do and they hurt like we do and they want like we do, and, Caroline, the human heart is the human heart. Prejudices still haunt us. Fears hover over our borders. Otherness and differentness and un-knownness are modern dilemmas. What do we hold onto? Who do we trust? How do we love against and love for and let go and hold on? It’s then. It’s now. It pulses.

In your end notes, you talk about dreaming the novel, about the images that sprang up and then began to thread themselves into a novel. Is this always your process or was there something very different about this?

Color, swirl, contrast—my books start there. I was a poet first. I was a skater. I love, now, to dance. I feel things first, long before I think them. I know the mood, I know the skies, I know the weight of things, I know what something will mean. Story pieces its way in. Plot follows.

All of that said, Dangerous Neighbors did feel different. It was a new step for me—more daring, more assertive in idea and manner. Flow, my river book, had set me free in many ways. It had also, for me, raised the standard. I don’t want to write books that can be easily classified. I want to keep breaking free, want to be surprised, want to be challenged.

What is obsessing you now?

Two books obsess me now. One concerns, among other things, the mind of a young woman following a devastating loss. What happens to that mind? How does it reconstitute itself? The other takes place on a cortijo in Spain. Both books are huge for me. Both require more of me than, at times, I have to give. I fight to bring them to wholeness.

Caroline, I thank you for the honor of these questions. You have made me think. I love that.

Read this Book: Please Come Back to Me by Jessica Treadway

One of the things I love best about being a critic is the chance to discover someone astonishing. Jessica Treadway (Absent Without Leave, And Give You Peace) knockout collection of stories, Please Come Back To Me, snagged the 2009 Flannery O'Connor Prize for Short Fiction, and I was immediately enthralled by the voice, the subject matter, and the stories themselves. Her fiction has been published in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, Glimmer Train, AGNI, Five Points, and other journals, and has been cited in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards, and The Pushcart Prize anthologies. I can't thank you enough, Jessica, for answering my questions.

You’ve written a novel as well as this collection of short stories. What’s the difference between writing shorter forms and a longer form for you? Which do you prefer?

It does seem as if there should be a difference, but having thought about it I’m not sure that there is that much of one, for me, in terms of the actual writing; with both forms I get excited at the beginning because it’s new, and fresh, and I’m feeling the exhilaration of discovery and possibility.Then that wears off, and it’s all just the thudding, plodding drudgery of hard work. With moments of that initial excitement peppered throughout, of course; otherwise, I’d probably never finish anything.

I think I prefer stories because it feels to me as if they allow for more distilled and concentrated moments of clarity than a novel, which by virtue of its length seems more attenuated. A story zooms in up close right away and stays there, whereas a novel pulls the lens back somewhat to allow for a wider picture. I think each form has its own unique benefits and limitations.

Stories come more naturally to me. I like the analogy comparing story writers and novelists to sprinters and long-distance runners. When I was a kid I was a sprinter – I couldn’t even imagine running cross-country, the way my sister did -- so if there’s a temperamental or artistic parallel to be drawn with a person’s physical predispositions, mine lies with the shorter, more intense spurts.

Can you tell me what your writing process is like (I’m obsessed by process!) Do you outline? Just follow your pen? How did many of these stories form?

I never used to outline at all, and I still don’t, with shorter stories. And when I do write notes, they include more questions to myself than anything else. Things like: Does it make sense that the character would feel this way, after that happens? One of the most important things to me is consistency in characterization.If I’m reading a book and I think No, this character wouldn’t do that, then the writer’s lost me. So I dread doing the same thing to a reader.

For the novel I’m working on, I do make notes just to keep track of what’s happening in every scene, how the scenes relate to each other, what motifs or themes I want to include, and how I can get the most out of each character.Even though you have more space in a novel than in a short story, I still try not to waste words – to make everything relevant to the whole.

That said, I love Jayne Anne Phillips’ long-ago quote that when she writes, she follows a whisper. That resonates completely for me. I start with an image or a person in real life, and the story takes off from there. “Dear Nicole” began with a strong sensory memory of the pond where the neighborhood boys used to play hockey when I was a kid, and it turned into ‘What if a boy hits a girl with a puck by accident when he’s playing hockey, and he feels so guilty that he marries her years later, even though she’s the wrong woman for him (and there is a right woman, but he doesn’t “owe” her anything)?’ “Oregon” began with the image of a broken snow-plow sitting in a field in the summer, “The Nurse and the Black Lagoon” with a news story I heard about a playground that had been burned down. I thought, Who would burn down a playground? I suppose all writers are intrigued by the what if inherent in a character or a situation. I’m writing a story right now inspired by my mother’s having told me that a woman we all know, from the town we grew up in, had been called out to Colorado because her adult son, who’d been suffering a terminal illness, was about to die. My first thought was of that woman sitting on the plane, about to take off, and nobody around her knowing about the painful journey she was embarking on.I felt a strong inclination to inhabit her, and tell her story. (Not the real woman’s story, but the one she inspired in me.)

In a lot of your stories, people wait until they are ready to know what’s obvious, and then they are able to act on it. They also realize their true selves, but then resist sharing it with others, keeping it a secret. Why do you think that is?

Like a lot of writers who hear the themes others see in their work, I hadn’t thought about any of it that way, and I really appreciate your close reading! I think, for the first part of your question, that to me it seems more that they are forced to act – by virtue of a deadline or, more often, by the truth imposing itself so insistently that they are no longer able to harbor the illusions they’d perpetuate if they had the choice. As for characters being reluctant to share their true selves, it probably derives from how tragic I find a situation like that – for instance, in “Oregon,” the idea that a woman would die without ever having been able to reveal her deepest longings, to even just one person, makes me incredibly sad for her. Without wanting to sound either too corny or high-falutin’, it feels like a privilege and an obligation to do the revealing for her – to bring her true self to the light of the fictional day – because she can’t or won’t do it for herself.

One story, in particular, Please Come Back to Me, is astonishing and heartbreaking, a fugue about loss and the desire for continued connection even after the grave, it also explores the things we yearn to believe—and the ways we fool ourselves. Do you think it’s possible to live in the world without doing that to some extent?

First of all, thank you very much for the compliment. And you’ve hit on one of my favorite themes, which is exploring exactly what you said – “the things we yearn to believe, and the ways we fool ourselves.” I’d like to believe it’s possible to live without inventing and harboring and hanging onto illusions, but I think it would require eternal and relentless vigilance, not to mention courage. And maybe, in the end, it isn’t possible – maybe the best we can hope is that the illusions we retain are ones that are harmless, or mostly so.Because the bigger ones, of course, have the power to destroy.

What’s obsessing you now in your work?

Figuring out and refining the relationships among members of the family in the novel I’m working on. When you have two people, determining the dynamic between them is one thing, but when you have four, as I do, the permutations can feel overwhelming – you’ve got threads between the parents to each other, each parent to each child, and the children to each other. It makes the consistency challenge all that much harder, at least to me.

Beyond that, I’m thinking a lot about why I want to tell the story of this novel, and whether my reason is worthy of all that work. I think it is, because it has to do with what we were just discussing – the detrimental effect of choosing to be willfully blind and not seeing the awful truth in front of you, despite all the evidence that says you should.

Gayle Brandeis remembers her mother

Gayle Brandeis--a loving friend and colleague--grew up in the Chicago area and has been writing poems and stories since she was four years old. She is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write(HarperOne), Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications), the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change, Self Storage (Ballantine) and Delta Girls (Ballantine), and her first novel for young readers, My Life with the Lincolns (Holt). (Buy them all now!)

Gayle 's mother committed suicide shortly after Gayle remarried and gave birth to a gorgeous baby boy. This moving essay, about dedications in novels, and about her mom, speaks to the stories we ache to tell, and the people we yearn for.

Maddie Dawson talks about the back story for The Stuff That Never Happened

While I am still navigating the wilds of my new novel (without a compass and the water is running low), the wonderful Maddie Dawson agreed to write a guest blog on the back story of her spectacularly good new novel, The Stuff That Never Happened. Thank you Maddie!

By Maddie Dawson

Nobody knows for sure where novels come from. I happen to believe they assemble themselves all on their own, haphazardly picking up little observations here and there and then smooshing them all together, like a big, out-of-control jambalaya recipe. You know how it is: your sister’s rough-and-ready laugh merges with the song playing on the radio, (which reminds you of your sixteenth birthday party), and then somehow joins up with a story you overheard the Starbucks barista telling about her ex-husband moving out of their apartment and taking everything with him, even the light bulbs in their sockets.

By the time these wisps organize themselves into a book with characters and a plot, they’re nothing like the original moments, of course. They’ve gone through so many changes that you can’t even remember why they pulled at you in the first place—and when people say (as they will), “Where did you get the idea for this novel?” you have to make up something because honestly, you can’t even remember.

Except for this time.

I’m a little embarrassed about this, but I know exactly where my novel came from. The Stuff That Never Happened happened because of three things: a once-loved man, a nearly empty train car, and four women sharing a bottle of wine at a business lunch.

And I remember very clearly the moment when I thought, “I am going to write a book!”

First we have to back up some years, back to when I was a newly divorced single mom, raising a baby and a toddler, and working as a newspaper reporter. My husband had suddenly upped and left me for his lab partner because, as he put it, so comically, “She’s not as tired as you are.” I don’t know this for a fact, but it also might have worked to her advantage that she did not have spit-up stains on the shoulders of all her clothing.

But, hey, it was the 1980s, when everybody seemed to be in a state of marital flux. It was a veritable epidemic. We were in a whole community of friends who were juggling babies, careers, sleep deprivation, and the abrupt realization that, as John Lennon put it, what we were living was actually our lives.

And so it happened that I fell in love with one of the most confused, sleep-deprived friends of all—a kind, philosophical, ironic, politically-minded, hilarious guy who wasn’t even married but was in an off-again, on-again, mostly-committed relationship. I first knew I was in love when he came over and washed my dishes and picked up the kids’ toys while he waited for me to edit a paper he’d written. A man who could wash dishes? I knew I’d follow him anywhere.

To misquote Tolstoy, all happy love affairs are alike, and all unhappy ones are unhappy in their own way. Over the next six years, we had some great times, marinating in both love and agony. We met in secret, we met publicly. We wrote love notes. We read poetry. We took long walks. And when all that wore thin, we started splitting up and then reconciling. Again and again and again, probably 458,000 times. We were that couple, exasperating everyone who knew us.

And then, as we approached our seventh year of this, I suddenly broke it off for good. We had one more evening of agony, but I was already seeing a new man who made me laugh and who didn’t seem to think love had to be so difficult all the time. I found myself falling in love with normalcy—and, reader, I married him. Got pregnant with a new child, bought a house in the suburbs, acquired a lawn mower and a pension plan, and vowed never to turn back to my old lover again.

Fast forward fifteen years. One day I got on the train to New York, on my way to meet with my editor. I had my laptop, and because the battery was low, I needed to find a car that had a working electrical outlet—not an easy thing on Metro North. So I moved from car to car, until finally I came to the very last car on the train, where—voila! There was an outlet. Five seconds after I settled down for two luxurious hours of writing, I looked up, and there was my old lover, looking right at me.

It was a gift, an unasked-for moment out of our usual lives. I would have never contacted him on my own, but here I was being given a chance to rehash our past, to figure out what it had all meant, if indeed it had meant anything at all.

So we sat together and talked about our lives, our old love for each other, our breakup, our kids, our marriages. And…well, it wasn’t all that dramatic. There was no rush of passion and regret. I wasn’t tempted to go back to him for the 458,001^st time. In

fact, I came away relieved that I had a happy marriage and feeling so aware of all his maddening traits--his vagueness and over-protective sense of privacy. By the time I got off the train, I was glad to be away from him--and so surprised to find that was my reaction.

Later that day, when I went to my lunch meeting with my editor, publisher, and some other authors, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. All these years! We all drank a bottle of wine and then, as so often happens with women, we got right down to it, and starting telling each other our man stories—stories about the ones we had loved, the ones we missed, the ones we regretted, the ones we were well rid of. We laughed, we whooped and screamed and carried on; in short, we did everything but pound the table with our shoes. And at one point, my editor leaned over and whispered to me, “This is your novel calling.”

She was right. (A good editor is usually right, I’ve noticed.) Once the lunch was over, I gathered up my wobbly self and went to a Starbucks, where I started writing a story of a man and woman who were once in love and who run into each other again. Quickly it was clear that it wasn’t my real story at all. These were new characters and their circumstances were completely different from mine—but what I wanted to capture through them was the poignancy of great love and great disappointment and the ways we have of glorifying the past and nearly missing out on the life that’s in front of us.

The story of Annabelle and Grant McKay is a story of a marriage and an affair that happened to it—and of the reconciliation agreement the couple made never to speak of that time again. The story seemed to come to me in two parts—the 1970s, with the early days of their courtship and marriage and the affair, and then the present, 2005, when their children have left home, and they are coping with the empty nest and the loneliness that has grown up between them. Annabelle, who has always dreamed of her old lover, Jeremiah, now explores the layers of all the marriages she knows—her own 28 year union with Grant, her parents’, her lover’s, and then her daughter’s.

Reviewers have called this a story of a scandal, and said that it’s a “chick lit” tale of extramarital sex and “the one who got away.” Far be it from me to argue with anybody who’s trying to say something exciting to sell a book, particularly mine! But honestly, I’m not convinced that’s what this book is about. While I was writing it, I was feeling deeply involved with Annabelle’s dilemmas—the common human dilemma of misplaced hope, the war of family ties vs. one’s own needs, and the unmasking of the wrong-headed stories we tell ourselves as we go through our lives. It’s also a story about mothers and daughters and the ways they can’t truly see each other, and about our love for our work, and our failures to communicate our deepest thoughts to those people who matter most to us.

In the end, as with all creative work, even though I see it through the prism of my own life, I'm aware always that the characters and the story line take on a life of their own someplace in my subconscious, the place where novels happily start assembling themselves quite without my permission or control.

And thank goodness for that.

Lisa Unger ask, "What Kind of Writer AM I?"

I'm thrilled to have Lisa Unger here again, ruminating on reader expectations and writer identity (and talking a bit more about her wonderful new novel, Fragile.) Thanks so, so much, Lisa!

I was speaking to a book group, which I often do. And a woman in the room said, “This is my first book of yours and I really … liked it.” She sounded surprised. “That’s wonderful,” I said. “I mean,” she went on. “I didn’t expect to. I don’t usually like thrillers. But this wasn’t, you know, fluff at all.” This type of thing doesn’t bother me much, though I hear it quite a bit. People bring all their own biases to the table … about each other, about books.

When I began my first novel at the age of 19, I didn’t sit down to write any particular kind of novel. I was just writing what I wanted to write … and that was a story about a troubled woman who had chosen a dark profession to try to order the chaos she perceived in her life and in the world. There was a psychic healer, a former FBI agent, and a high body count. So, yes, I supposed when the book was done, it was in fact a mystery -- or a maybe a thriller. Possibly, it was crime fiction. The point is when my fingers were at the keyboard, the question of what space it would occupy on the bookshelf simply never occurred.

Now, with eight novels on the shelves (well, four of them are still on the shelves), one about to be published, and my tenth newly submitted to my publisher, I still don’t give too much thought to who I am as a writer, what kind of books I’m writing. I still write from that inner place and honor the voices in my head. Which is why I was about halfway through FRAGILE before I realized that it was different from what had come before it. And that it was the book that I had been trying to write, in one way or another, for more than twenty years.

This story has tried to find its way out in various partials over the years. Always with different voices and never quite succeeding to resolve itself. I was surprised when it surfaced in FRAGILE. And in writing this book I learned something truly interesting: one can have ambitions to write a story but not have the talent or the craft to tell it well. It took the writing of eight novels before I had the skills necessary to tell the story, to write the kind of book that had simmering for decades.

I know there can be some snobbery in the industry – and, clearly, among book group readers. If you’re writing mystery or thriller or crime fiction, there’s a sense that you’re not writing as well as those who are writing “literary” or “general” fiction. But we have only to look to writers like Laura Lippman, Ruth Rendell, Dennis Lehane, Kate Atkinson and George Pelecanos to know better. I’d go so far as to say that some of the best people writing today are writing in crime fiction. And I think if you asked most writers what kind of books they write, most of them would pause. The answer they’d give might not be their own, or one that they feel quite fits. I certainly don’t claim to know the answer when I’m asked. I always nicely say, “Maybe you should read my books and tell me what you think they are.”

So, years later, I guess I’m still trying to decide what kind of writer I am. Or not. Maybe that’s up to the people who publish me, sell me and read me. Maybe I’ll just continue to follow the advice I give to my fellow writers when they are in a place of angst about genre, or publicity and promotion, or advertising and bestseller lists: Nose to the keyboard. Because, as writers, that’s where we’re at our best; it’s usually where we’re happiest. That’s where I was when I wrote FRAGILE and all my novels – whatever they wound up being when they were done.

Karen Degroot Carter Talks about Entering the Writing Zone

I'm deep in Writerland, braving the wilds, hoping my shots work and watching out for wild prose-destroying beasts-- we won't even talk about the ego-mashing ones. I'm very grateful to the fantastic writers who offered to write guest posts for me, starting with Karen DeGroot Carter (Thank you, Karen!)

The Writing Process: Entering the Zone and Staying There…

This means in Spite of It All. Even if it means telling it all to go to hell. The laundry that should be done before a loved one is forced to fish a dingy must-wear shirt from the hamper, the bills that should be paid before the electricity and water are turned off, the weeds that should be pulled before the garden chokes on its own excesses. While you’re at it, exorcise the word “should” from your vocabulary. Either do it or don’t, but feel free to brainstorm about writing projects at the same time. When you write, however, do nothing else.

Sounds simple, I know. This and the charge to write before you open e-mail or check Facebook each day. Write at a certain time each day. Write while wearing your favorite fishmonger sweater, burning your favorite soy-based cucumber-melon candle, and drinking a cup of your favorite blueberry-pomegranate-with-a-dash-of-cinnamon herbal tea. Unless all this is more distracting than it’s worth. Then, just write. The task of putting pen to paper or tapping on keyboard keys can send you into a productive writing zone faster than any plans or preparations.

I find entering the zone when I’m not writing easy, too. Showering, yard-working, and about-to-fall-asleeping always allow my subconscious room to open wide and reveal itself. If I allow it to. When I don’t shut it down because I really “should” be thinking about the next thing on the to-do list, the next day’s urgencies, and because if I let it truly reveal what it has in store for me and my writing, it will distract me from all the other critical tasks at hand. I’m a responsible person, I insist. Daydreaming is not productive.

Or is it? An October 2009 Psychology Today article, How Daydreaming Helps Children Process Information and Explore Ideas, states what many creative adults happily acknowledge (and often use in defense when accused of slacking off): that daydreaming can be “more inventive and ultimately more useful than the task at hand.” And according to a 2008 Boston Globe article, Daydream Achiever: “Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections.”

If you’re a writer like me with so many other important things to do, however, no scientific statement regarding the benefits of daydreaming can turn moments of silent, seemingly unproductive introspection into works of art. Unless the subconscious is allowed to do its thing and the ideas it/you generate are acknowledged, memorized, and actually written down at the first available moment…even if that means waking up the next day to review—and note, as in on paper—what was considered possible (and possibly even inspired) prior to sleep hours before.

While traveling through the flatlands of Nebraska on the way back into Colorado a few weeks ago, the dullness of the drive lent itself perfectly to a few instances of writerly daydreaming and resultant note-jotting (while keeping one eye on the road, of course). When I posted this creative discovery on Facebook, friends agreed tedious travel can lead to inspired moments of clarity. One friend referred to the legend of the especially productive train ride Abraham Lincoln took into Pennsylvania, where he was scheduled to speak at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg. During that brief time of train-boundness, the (now-debunked) legend had it, President Lincoln composed The Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope, an address he actually wrote in Washington and finished the morning of the dedication—and doubted many would long remember. It’s always possible “the world will little note, nor long remember” the potential masterpiece you or I write, but it is possible they will. As long as, despite the seemingly steady stream of distractions hell-bent on deterring our best creative efforts, we write it.