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ABOUT
WRITING
Inspiration
Characters
Locations
Love/Hate Occupation
The
first question anyone asks a writer is How do you do
it? My answer is, I don't know. It's certainly not any
magic formula, it's simply something there, inside my
head. Maybe its due to that childhood shyness that cut
me off from people and forced me into a world of my
own imagination, I was an observer rather than a participant,
an eavesdropper on conversations, a gleaner of information.
A writer must be all these things.
INSPIRATION
(see also A Writing
Experience and Music)
Inspiration
is a mystery. I've never known how to define it. For
me, it's never based on an incident I read about in
a local newspaper or a magazine article. If I had to
pinpoint it, I would say inspiration is an interactive
chain of thought which always for me begins with the
main character. As I write her, I get to know her, to
understand how she thinks, reacts, who she is.
Once
I have the idea for that character, that person, then
the other characters emerge and the story begins to
form around her. After that, my imagination takes over.
CHARACTERS
All
my characters are fictitious, though some are based
on real people. For instance, Annie in The
Rich Shall Inherit was inspired by my own mother's
Yorkshire family. And my wonderful Maudie, (my absolutely
favorite character and the narrator in Legacy
of Secrets) is the quintessential Irishwoman,
like many I got to know when I lived in Ireland, old
ladies full of wild stories and off-beat charm. And
friends tell me they recognize Anabelle in the character,
Ellie (the owner of a small cafe in Santa Monica) in
Sooner or
Later).
Leonie,
Maudie and Ellie are a part of my family, along with
Al and Marla in All
or Nothing (published Dec '99 by Delacorte),
and Zelda and Ed in In
A Heartbeat (to be published in Dec 2000 by
Delacorte) and of course, my lovely Lara and
Dan in The Last Time I
Saw Paris (to
be published summer 2001 on St.Martin's Press).
They
lived in my head when I was writing them. I almost became
them. I ate with them, drank with them, spoke for them,
dreamed about them, and slept with them. (And so, unfortunately,
did Richard. He says to tell you never to marry a writer,
she's usually only half there.)
LOCATIONS
In
my novels, location always plays an important part.
(see Travel)
I write about places I know, whether it's Hong Kong
and China in Fortune
Is A Woman, Provence in The
Secret of the Villa Mimosa, or L.A. in All
or Nothing. Almost any place my characters go
is real, the cafes and restaurants, the streets, the
local shops. I have been there and what I do is try
to take you there with them. (For a small sample of
this kind of writing, see English
Sunday Lunch, and A
Writing Experience)
LOVE/HATE
For
me, too, writing is a love/hate occupation. I love it
when I start a new book, I can't sleep for the long
months I'm writing it and I love it when it's finished
and out of my head, at last.
Writing
is also a never-ending business. I write all the time:
on my mac, on the little notepads I keep in my purse
and scattered around the house, in the middle of the
night when an idea comes to me. And why oh why do they
so frequently occur in the middle of the night? It's
such a pain because then I have to get out of bed and
write everything down immediately. If I don't, I know
I'll have forgotten it by morning. The fact is there
is no rest for a writer. And nor, Richard grumbles when
the light goes on yet again at two in the morning, is
there for a writer's husband.
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