Questions about writing and such:

What are your favorite writing resources?

Here are a few of the resources I’ve personally found helpful:

The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. This is a terrific kick-in-the-pants, perhaps the very one you need. While you’re visiting his web site, I also highly recommend getting on his email list. His weekly tips are terrific.

The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard. Apparently Dillard called this book embarrassing. I disagree. Although I’ve always loved the language and ideas, this work took on new meaning once I’d written a book or two.

Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth wants you to trust the universe and do your work…and she’s right. Also check out her TED talk, and her Magic Lessons podcast.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott — if nothing else, read the chapter Sh*tty First Drafts. Then write a sh*tty first draft. Then tear it to shreds and build it back up again.

I’m struggling with my writing project. What advice do you have?

There’s a very good chance that at the very moment you’re reading this, I, too, am frustrated and despairing in my writer’s cave. It’s not for the faint of heart, this writing gig. I don’t know if that’s comforting or not.

The best advice I can offer you is this: keep going. Writing is murky. You don’t have to see a clear path to a finished product: you just need to know a single next step. By the time you’ve completed that step, chances are good you’ll see another thing that needs to be done.  And on and on, and then one day, miraculously, you’re done.

For the record, when I was finishing THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH, I was so frustrated with my own ability to get it right, I literally walked around holding a pencil between my teeth in order to stay positive.  Maybe try that.

Oh, and that thing you’re afraid to put in there? The thing that you think will never resonate with anyone? The thing that makes you feel super-vulnerable, like you’re standing in your middle school hallway in your pajamas and everyone is laughing at you? That, right there, might just be the heart of your book.

You began writing books after having children. Can you talk more about the intersection of parenthood and writing?

I think we often imagine parenthood — and motherhood in particular — as somehow diminishing, as if “Mother” is the opposite of a professional/thinker/artist. And it’s true that parenting also brings logistical and time constraints that make writing and art difficult. But for me, being a parent was incredibly helpful in finding my own voice, and in sharpening my own sense of clarity about the world.

Parenting requires constantly moving in and out of another’s perspective. It makes us see the familiar world through new eyes. And, when we are at our best as parents, we take a long view, hopefully envisioning Something Better than what has been. These, of course, are the very traits that writers and artists most need.

Can you talk a little more about your inspiration for THE SMASH-UP? Why, specifically, did you want to reexamine an Edith Wharton story?

THE SMASH-UP was inspired in part by Edith Wharton’s ETHAN FROME, a 1911 tale about a small town love triangle, set in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, which is not far from my own home.

I first had the idea in March of 2018, while sledding on a particularly (fans of ETHAN FROME will understand this). As soon as the premise occurred to me, I knew it was a chance to explore not only the age-old themes of passion, family, duty, regret, and temptation, but also the way the world has changed in the hundred years since Wharton published her tale — particularly in regard to women.

And once you got the idea…what then?

I spent a lot of time not only re-reading Wharton, but also learning about Edith Wharton herself. I visited on multiple occasions Wharton’s Berkshires home, The Mount, and I wrote several scenes from the book while there. THE SMASH-UP kept the structure and basic outline (a love triangle, a small town, a world-rocking smash-up) of ETHAN FROME; it also includes a couple of nods to Wharton’s own life: a touch of blackmail, an obsession with home decor, an athlete named after one of Wharton’s most famous critics.

In the end, THE SMASH-UP, like the story that inspired it, is a tale that’s at once plausible and projected, one that explores what it feels like to be trapped by circumstance…and the lengths to which some people might go to escape.

What are you working on now?

I have no idea. Honestly. I wish I did.