A lot of your settings are places I can’t find on a map, even though they seem real. Do they exist?
The writing of fiction is a dance between truth and invention. Pittman, Kentucky, the starting point of The Bean Trees, resembles any number of small towns in east-central Kentucky where I grew up. I didn’t invent its weathered look, its party-line phones, its inclination to rally around good gossip or a neighbor in need. Those things […]
To what extent is your fiction autobiographical?
Not at all. The plots are not my life, those characters are not people I know, and none of them is me. My job, as I understand it, is to invent lives that are far more enlightening than my own, invested with special meaning. That’s the whole advantage of fiction over life: you get to […]
Do you go through a lot of drafts?
Gazillions. I adore revision. Whether it’s a two-page article or a 500-page book, I rewrite endlessly. I may rewrite the first paragraph of a novel fifty times before I’m satisfied. I comb through a manuscript again and again, altering every sentence a little or a lot. I don’t print out every draft on paper, or […]
How do you begin a novel?
I begin by imagining something surprising and important, a question whose answer is not clear to me, but seems vital. Questions like: How do we balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the community, when they’re in conflict? (That became Pigs in Heaven.) How does one make peace with the terrible things one […]
Do you write every day?
Writing is my dream life. But many writers will tell you, in the modern era our job seems to demand everything but writing. In a typical week I spend hours or days on non-writing chores: fielding interviews, reviewing reprint requests and copy, updating websites, responding to particularly crucial requests, administering the Bellwether Prize, answering queries from translators, […]
What is your writing routine? How do you discipline yourself?
I find it takes discipline to stop writing and go do other things, such as cleaning the house. I tend to wake up extremely early with words flooding into my brain. If I don’t get up, they’ll continue to accumulate in puddles, so it’s a relief to get to the keyboard and dump them out. I’ll take […]