I don't really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don't know how I write.
— Elizabeth Berg
I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written.
It is true that all mothers do things differently from their own mothers, but they don't necessarily do them better.
Writing is, of course, a solitary occupation. But for many writers, myself included, it's through writing that we make certain vital connections.
I tend not to write books that are really, really long, and I'm also a pretty fast writer.
The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books.
In writing a novel about George Sand, I hoped to present her as the talented, beguiling, complicated and occasionally infuriating woman I think she was, but I hope, too, that readers will enjoy the people she surrounded herself with.
The process of writing and creating and answering that very unique call inside yourself has nothing to do with agents and sales and all that stuff.
Everybody complains about getting older, but I find it such a rich time of life. There are negative things about it, I suppose, but more than that, I'm finding it to be a very positive experience in which growth suggests itself in a much more alluring way than it did when I was young - isn't that funny?
It feels like my books come true. I write these things, and then they kind of end up happening. I wasn't divorced, for example, when I wrote a book about divorce.
If there were a category in the Olympics for laundry, my mother would have been a gold-medal winner.
Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one in their head that rarely turns off.
We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.
In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.
I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.
Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea.
Really, my sacred place is my study where there are books that I love and things that people have given me.
With 'Durable Goods,' I meant only to write about being an army brat. What emerged was a story about compassion - the need for it, the expression of it.
I always wrote as a vehicle for expression but did not try writing for publication until my mid-thirties, at which time I started writing for magazines. I wrote essays and then short stories, then moved into novels.
Everybody knows the mother-daughter relationship is one of the most complex there is.
I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them.
It usually takes about a year to write each book. I don't plan it that way. I don't set deadlines. If a book wants to take longer, it can.
When you have that deep kind of hunger that is part longing, what's better to eat than the best apple pie? Or the best potato salad and guacamole? Or the best deviled eggs and crab cakes and white chocolate raspberry pie?
One of the great pleasures in writing 'The Dream Lover' was learning about some of the real people who populated George Sand's life. What a cast of characters! And what a pleasure to recreate them upon the page!
If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it's to keep your own counsel, first and foremost.
I think Chicago is the best city in the country, hands down, but I don't like the winter there anymore.
No, I am not my mother. I am deeply, endlessly grateful for what she did and who she was, but I am a different kind of person.
As a child, I saw my mother prepare for Christmas every year, and it never occurred to me that labor was involved. I thought it was my mother's joy and privilege to hang tinsel on the tree strand by strand, to make sure that every room in the house had a touch of Christmas, down to the Santa-themed rug and hand towels in the bathroom.
No matter what you write, you need an active imagination.
I have always believed in helping people whose work I admire.
We're such imperfect beings. I think that's more often the case than not.
When I look at my own work, I see love, loss, and loneliness. Part of it might be that I was an army brat. I moved around all the time. There was a sense of nothing being permanent.
I don't have a medicine cabinet.
I can't decide if I'm a hippie or elegant older woman, a farmer's wife, a crazy person.
I think titles are extremely important for novels: They can set the tone, tip you off, serve as shorthand for what the essential contents are.
When I wrote 'Home Safe,' I wanted to look at a number of things: the mystery and joy and pain of creativity. What happens when a vital safety net is suddenly removed. The difficulty some people have in growing up. The way a deep love can be as crippling as it is satisfying. But mostly, I wanted to look at the mother-daughter relationship.
Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.
I'm the kind of person who is entertained watching someone simply be themselves, whether they're putting their children to bed or making dinner or sitting at the table reading the morning newspaper.
If I don't feel like writing on a certain day, I just go to the cafe and hang around.
It is a happy day when I am asked to publicly recommend a book. It is also a dilemma. When I consider all the books I have loved and depended upon and profited from, how can I pick just one?
My favorite splurge is homemade chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream or a Sausage McMuffin with egg or scalloped potatoes or turkey yanked right off the carcass and dipped in gravy or See's chocolate.
Every book is its own experience, the writing of it.
When I lived alone in Chicago, I had a lot of loneliness issues.
My mom used to keep all her Christmas cards in a basket bedecked with red ribbon, and I loved to look at them all and read all the letters.
You need a place to work that works for you, and you need people to understand that when you are writing, you are doing a rarefied type of brain surgery and therefore should not be subject to a million random interruptions.
As for the notion that everything has already been said, maybe it has, but life is like meatloaf: there are so many different ways to present it.
I love to listen to people talk, especially when they're being really honest and they're not trying to sound any particular way.
When I lived in Boston, I had an office that I rented because I found it wonderful to go away from my house to work: It was so quiet, and I couldn't go to the refrigerator or do the laundry.
When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.
I just cannot stand an unmade bed.
