Michelle Friedman, who practices psychiatry in New York City and directs pastoral counseling at YCT, recently completed a memoir of growing up in Divine Corners.

Q&A with Katie Hafner

What is your writing process?

Some novelists will tell you that they allow their characters to control the plot. That has always struck me as a Ouija Board approach to building a story. For The Boys, I decided I needed to outline the plot so that I knew exactly what happened, then hew closely to the story as I wrote. I’m not a linear writer. I tend to write in what might strike people as a haphazard fashion. If a scene–or snippet of dialogue – pops into my head, I write that. And somehow it all comes together in the end.

Do you have a regular writing practice? If so, describe it. (For instance, do you write first thing in the morning for at least one hour? Commit to writing 1,000 words a day? Journal for 15 minutes and see what happens? Write late at night, after everyone has gone to bed?)

I’d love to say I’m extraordinarily disciplined and write every morning from 7 am to noon. But I’m actually extraordinarily distractible. As a reporter, I’ve always written in bursts, as that’s how deadline work usually goes. So when I write books, I treat the writing process much the same way. I pretend I’m on a daily deadline and make myself sit and write for, say, 45 minutes (I actually set a timer). I write with two others – me in San Francisco, another in L.A., and a third in New York. We’re pretty good at keeping each other motivated.

I find that the only way to really get work done is to remove myself from my home base, pile everything into my car, drive somewhere, sit for a week or ten days, and just write.

Do you write by hand? Type from notes?

I type. But also, sometimes I type on an electric typewriter. And sometimes I dictate a thought into the voice memos on my phone. But mostly, I type on my computer.

What books or stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?

A confession: when The New York Times review of The Boys (which felt too good to be true) came out, I grew very curious about Weike Wang, the novelist who wrote the review. I just read both her novels, Chemistry and Joan is Okay. They’re great, and I can see why Wang liked The Boys. Both her novels are quite quirky, and she has inspired me to keep writing quirky fiction that also ponders deep questions.

For craft, I recently read George Saunders’s brilliant A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.

And for straight-up great writing, I’ve just started reading Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies.

Do you read actual books, read on Kindle, read on Audible, borrow from library?

All of the above!

What are you working on now?

I’m very busy these days with my podcast, Lost Women of Science, and I’m turning back to a novel I actually started about ten years ago then set aside because it felt too complicated for a first novel. Now I feel ready to tackle it.

Katie Hafner was on staff at The New York Times for ten years, where she remains a frequent contributor, writing on healthcare and technology. She has also worked at Newsweek and BusinessWeek, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She is the author of five previous works of nonfiction covering a range of topics, including the origins of the Internet, computer hackers, German reunification, and the pianist Glenn Gould.

Her first novel, The Boys, was published by Spiegel & Grau in July 2022. She is currently working on a book of essays about taking up the game of golf.

Q&A with Caroline Siegrist

What is your writing process?

Having kids has forced me to be a lot less precious about when and where I write. Will I have a latté in hand and be surrounded by ambient Euro-pop in a coffee shop? Not anymore! But in some ways, the demands of small children have made me more resourceful about my writing.

James Clear’s book Atomic Habits has also changed the way I think about a daily writing habit. It’s the compound interest idea of writing: that doing a little every day really adds up in the end. It’s not the most original idea, but it’s such a good reminder, especially if you’re in a season in which writing a short story a day or whatever isn’t going to be doable. Just keep flexing that muscle.

Do you have a regular writing practice? If so, describe it. (For instance, do you write first thing in the morning for at least one hour? Commit to writing 1,000 words a day? Journal for 15 minutes and see what happens? Write late at night, after everyone has gone to bed?)

I find that when I first wake up, I have access to my raw feelings, thoughts, and memories–plus whatever I was just dreaming about. Writing comes easily in that state, and I try to do it as quickly as possible, before the rest of me wakes up. Then I edit later.

This practice spun off from the The Artist’s Way philosophy of writing three pages first thing in the morning. It’s like trying to get the gunk–the worries, complaints, and navel-gazing–out so you can get the good stuff flowing. But I don’t throw out this writing like Julia Cameron says to. I keep it, because I often find the kernels–or little nubbins, as I call them–of a story or essay there that I can develop later. Most of my essays came from this early morning trash heap of ideas and thoughts. If you’ve read my published work, you’re essentially reading my trash art.

Do you write by hand? Type from notes?

I write with a desk riser–or a big pile of books if I’m not at home–under my laptop so that I’m not looking down. That might be my best piece of writing advice: get your screen at eye level or you’ll pay later! Literally. Physical therapy is very expensive.

What books or stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?

I really loved All of My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. Such a gut punch. It’s about Pakistani teens living in small town America and being pushed into a lot of responsibility because their parents aren’t functioning as parents. Despite the title, though, a very teenage sweet love story runs through it. I came away really uplifted and absolutely plan to read it again.

At the other end of the spectrum, I had a great time with Unlikely Animals, by Annie Hartnett, which was a staff pick at Square Books in Oxford, MS. Hartnett uses the town’s cemetery residents to narrate the story, and they kind of become the peanut gallery, adding humor and insight. It’s such a quirky book, with so much heart, and a clear love of animals. It reminded me how sometimes it’s okay to write a book just to delight your audience, not to make some profound point.

Crying in H Mart is another recent favorite. Michelle Zauner really digs into the complicated mother-daughter dynamic, and the way she writes about food just made my mouth water.

As far as CNF, I loved The Honey Bucket, by Laura Joyce Hubbard. Hippocampus Magazine published it a couple of years ago, and it’s really stuck with me. Hubbard has gone through this extensive training to fly combat aircraft, but she has no place to pee when she’s in the air. Nowhere. There’s a tiny urinal and that’s it. It’s such a great example of creative nonfiction because it shines a light on the things that consume our thoughts but that we don’t really talk about. And how institutionalized sexism can be, especially in the military.

Do you read actual books, read on Kindle, read on Audible, borrow from library?

I borrow hard copies from the library and or listen on Libro.fm–it’s just like Audible but lets you support the independent bookstore of your choice with your audiobook purchases. I’m a Libro.fm evangelist!

Which writers do you turn to for inspiration?

I like to read poetry when I have writers’ block. Recently I’ve been turning to Kate Bear, because she’s redeemed suburban momhood as a walk of life that’s just as literary as any other. You don’t have to be holed up in a cabin in the woods applying your beard oil to be a poet. You can be driving to soccer practice and find the beauty and musicality while rendering that.

What are you working on now?

I’m dabbling in fiction for a change. When I published my last essay, Sinners List, I realized how much I liked writing about my hometown. It’s a pretty colorful place, but with lots of problems. So I knew I wanted to focus on Blue Ridge–or a fictionalized version of it–but I wanted to write something lighter with that same local flavor. So I’ve been playing around with a young adult novel set there. A young, bookish woman who doesn’t quite belong, and who gets sucked deeper every time she tries to escape. No relation to me, ha!

Caroline Siegrist is a writer based in Nashville, TN. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, the Waking, Mockingbird, Rock & Sling, Hippocampus, and more. She’s a staff writer for Cool Mom Picks and blogs (sometimes) at Spilled Milk.

Q&A with Gwen E. Kirby

Claire Kirby

What is your writing process?

My writing process is a lot of flying blind but is almost always anchored by a setting or idea that has been rattling around in my mind for a long time. So for example, I wrote a story about an unclaimed baggage store in Alabama. The Unclaimed Baggage Store is a real place that I visited maybe seven years ago and I loved the idea of a small town where the random bits of people’s lives washed up. When I first visited, I had no idea what the story was, I just knew the setting was right. Five years later, I found my angle, and started typing. As with most of my stories, I didn’t have a plot figured out, but once I felt like I had an in. Story evolves as I type and I get to know my characters and what they want.

Do you have a regular writing practice? If so, describe it. (For instance, do you write first thing in the morning for at least one hour? Commit to writing 1,000 words a day? Journal for 15 minutes and see what happens? Write late at night, after everyone has gone to bed?)

My writing practice goes through periods of cohesiveness. I have months when I write 1,000 words a day. I wrote a whole novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I also have months where I barely write at all. I am constantly finding new ways to trick myself into writing, to overcoming the insecurities that keep me away from work. I imagine I will spend my whole life creating routines, crushing them, losing them, and making them again. What matters is trying again and again and never giving up.

Do you write by hand? Type from notes?

I write on my laptop and pretty rarely write by hand unless I have an idea and no computer nearby. As for outlines, I haven’t used one before, but then I’ve never written a novel! My short stories are short, on average around three thousand words, and I am able to keep those whole in my mind. As I learn to write longer, I think outlines will still be more of a second draft tool, but I am excited to learn what works best for me!

If you’re writing a book, did you first come up with an outline or table of contents?

This doesn’t exactly apply to me since I wrote a short story collection! The book took around eight years to write and there are many stories I wrote during that time that either didn’t work or did work but didn’t fit the collection. While the idea of an outline doesn’t apply to my collection, I do think that I slowly came to understand what overarching themes connected the stories. I started to realize what an important role historical fiction would play and how much I wanted those stories to be interwoven with the contemporary stories to emphasize the bond of women across time and space. I also realized that my women were universally flawed and that that was actually what I wanted to lean into. I loved that they were messy! And their mess fits, I hope!, with the variety of stories in the book, which perhaps look messy in their abundance, but form a cohesive whole.

What books or stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?

Oh gosh, I am constantly amazed by the writing out there in the world! Recently I’ve loved A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka, which was what I want most from a comic novel, which is to say funny and heartbreaking. I also loved Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett, which I had been looking forward to since I read her first novel Rabbit Cake. I could go on and on!

Do you read actual books, read on Kindle, read on Audible, borrow from library?

I read every which way! I prefer to read physical copies and so I buy books and I also check out a ton of library books. I read on my Kindle too (purchased and through the library) and I occasionally listen to audiobooks (I’m currently enjoying Andy Serkis reading The Fellowship of the Ring, which I haven’t read since high school). I think sometimes people virtual signal about the medium through which they read and I think that’s absurd. Read! Read whatever way works best for you. Because of my age, I grew up reading physical books and because I have a lot of eye fatigue from computer use, I find them both comforting and best for my eyes, but I think all mediums are awesome.

Which writers do you turn to for inspiration?

I enormously admire George Saunders and Kelly Link, who I think are living masters of the short story. I look to Venita Blackburn and Kathy Fish for their incredible flash fiction. I think Katherine Heiny is an incredible inspiration for comic writers who want to write with pathos. Samantha Irby and Rebecca Solnit write wildly different but absolutely incredible essays. I hugely admire Sarah MacLean, Tessa Bailey, and Talia Hibbert’s romance novels, which do important work. They refuse to be limited by the disrespect leveled at their genre. I am in awe of science fiction writer N. K. Jemisin, whose books are brilliant and, just wow! I mean, read her books now. Please stop me, because there are so many writers who inspire me!

If you have had a story, essay or book published recently, how many drafts did you revise before you finally submitted it? How many hours/months/years (roughly) did you spend on it?

At last check, I have 348 rejections for stories and eighteen total acceptances. No story I’ve ever written was done the first or second or third time. A few are done on the fourth. Some on the eighteenth. It has been a study in patience. And mad, mad stubbornness.

What are you working on now?

I am still writing short stories but I am also working on a novel! Let’s just say that if you like ladies in the past who are badasses, well, I continue to like them too. Mostly, I am trying to keep writing and not let the world, which feels so dark right now, keep me from writing. And I won’t lie, sometimes it does. But then I think about the books that get me through my days, and that spurs me on.

Gwen E. Kirby’s debut collection Shit Cassandra Saw is available from Penguin Books. She has an MFA from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati. She is the Associate Director of Programs and Finance for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference at the University of the South, where she also teaches creative writing.

Q&A with Brian Morton

What is your writing process?

I try to write more or less every day. I miss a lot of days, for one reason or another, but I try.

Do you have a regular writing practice? If so, describe it.

When I am writing a rough draft, I try for a thousand words a day. It’s much better than sitting there for two hours waiting for inspiration to show up. Even if the thousand words are terrible, they give you something to work with. I’ve found that inspiration tends to show up much more often when I’m revising than when I am writing first drafts.

Do you write by hand? Type from notes?

I have a laptop that doesn’t connect to the internet—that seems crucial. When I’m writing a first draft of a novel, I sit down, close my eyes, and let out whatever wants to come out. I try to get my conscious mind out of the way. I think of writing as a process that goes from my fingers to the keyboard, bypassing my brain.

Where do you write? (Bed, desk, kitchen table, coffee shop?)

This year I’ve been teaching a workshop at Sarah Lawrence where part of the deal is that we get together in a classroom at 8:30 in the morning, four days a week, and write silently in one another’s company. On other days, I write at a card table in the bedroom. There are parts of the house where I could be more secluded, but I like to write in proximity to my wife, my kids (when they’re home for vacation), and the cat. I don’t want to miss any of the fun.

If you’re writing a book, did you first come up with an outline or table of contents?

I’ve never used an outline. I usually have to stumble around for hundreds of pages just to get an inkling of what I am trying to write. Sometimes I think that after all of these years of writing, I should have been able to come up with a more efficient way of going about this. But maybe efficiency isn’t the name of the game here.

What books or stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?

I’m in the middle of Shirley Hazzard’s Transit of Venus, from 1980, which, line by line, is one of the wittiest and most intelligent novels I’ve ever read. So far it feels like it’s up there with The House of Mirth or Washington Square.

Which writers do you turn to for inspiration?

Chekhov, James, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Wharton, Forster, Lawrence, Woolf. The old guard. Slightly more contemporary people include Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Saul Bellow, and Elizabeth Taylor (the novelist, not the movie star). Some living writers who mean a lot to me are Adolph Reed, Barbara Fields, Kenan Malik, Clifford Thompson, and Zadie Smith.

If you have had a story, essay or book published recently, how many drafts did you revise before you finally submitted it? How many hours/months/years (roughly) did you spend on it?

I’ve got a book out this month called Tasha. It’s my first nonfiction book; it’s about the last five years of my mother’s life. I’d been thinking about writing about her for a long time, but I had so many thoughts about her, so many feelings, so many questions, that the prospect of writing about her seemed too daunting for me to even begin. Finally, it occurred to me that the last five years of her life added up to a story on their own, and once I saw it that way, the writing came quickly. Normally a book takes me five years or more; this one took six months. I once heard a novelist say that if you’re a certain kind of writer, someone who takes five or six or seven years to write a book, and if you’ve been working steadily in that fashion for decades, sometimes life takes pity on you and throws you a gift—a book that comes out quickly. I guess this one was the gift.

Brian Morton is the author of five novels, including Starting Out in the Evening and Florence Gordon. He’s an editorial board member of Dissent magazine and teaches at Sarah Lawrence. He has received the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Koret Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and the Pushcart Prize. He has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. In 2007, Starting Out in the Evening was adapted into a film, starring Frank Langella and Lili Taylor.

Q&A with Katherine Heiny

Lexey Swall, NYT

What is your writing process?

Usually, a story or book starts from a small moment—like once I was at the airport and they announced my flight was canceled, and a woman near me said to her friend, “That would’ve been good to know 4 beers ago”—and the story goes from there. It builds in my mind very quickly but it’s only when I start writing that I can see the connections and how it will work.

Do you have a regular writing practice? If so, describe it. (For instance, do you write first thing in the morning for at least one hour? Commit to writing 1,000 words a day? Journal for 15 minutes and see what happens? Write late at night, after everyone has gone to bed?)

A long time ago, I read that Stephen King goes for a walk and figures out what he’s going to write before he starts writing and I figured whatever Stephen King does is something I should do, and now it’s the only way I can write. I usually go for a long walk in the morning and then come home and write for a couple of hours. If I’m under deadline, I repeat the process in the afternoon and sometimes a third time in the evening. It can take a lot of walks when I’m finishing a project.

Do you write by hand? Type from notes?

I sometimes make very bird-scratchy notes in a notebook if I’m away from my desk but I type everything, including first drafts. I know lots of writers who swear by writing the first draft longhand but that would never work for me—I skip around too much. (I wonder if I had been born in the 1800’s if I ever would have written at all?)

If you’re writing a book, did you first come up with an outline or table of contents?

I usually do an outline but it’s never more than a couple of pages. Once I figure out where the book is heading, I can sort of keep it on track. And often the ending will occur to me about halfway through and from that point on, I’m writing toward the ending. It’s a very confused and nonlinear process and maybe there’s an easier, saner way, but I don’t know it.

What books or stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?

Both Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan and The Idiot by Elif Batuman made me want to write stories in the first person, which is not something I’m very comfortable doing. But both books were so funny, so fresh, so wonderful that it made me want to try.

Do you read actual books, read on Kindle, read on Audible, borrow from library?

I read a lot of books on Kindle, and I love it. I feel no urge to go old style but once in a while I see the cover of an actual-book that I love and feel a little jolt of longing. You don’t get that jolt with Kindle.

Which writers do you turn to for inspiration?

There are certain authors that I return to again and again--Anne Tyler, Nick Hornby, Helen Fielding, Ira Levin, Thomas Harris, Daphne Du Maurier, to name just a few—for inspiration. I also think it’s hard to read Lorrie Moore and NOT feel inspired.

If you have had a story, essay or book published recently, how many drafts did you revise before you finally submitted it? How many hours/months/years (roughly) did you spend on it?

A teacher told me once that you were ready to submit something when you’re sick of it and I’ve found that to be a good guide. A book takes me years (literally!) although the last book I wrote took me maybe 18-20 months to write the first half and six months to write the second half. It kind of took on a life of its own at the halfway point.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a story collection and I just finished a story about the time in my twenties when I wore a bridesmaid's dress to a temp job and I spent the entire day calling people to tell them how hilarious it was and my friend took the subway about 45 stops to come see it in person.

Katherine Heiny is the author of Early Morning Riser, Standard Deviation and Single, Carefree Mellow. For more information, please go to KatherineHeiny.com.

Q&A with Hala Alyan

Elena Mudd

Do you have a regular writing practice? If so, describe it. (For instance, do you write first thing in the morning for at least one hour? Commit to writing 1,000 words a day? Journal for 15 minutes and see what happens? Write late at night, after everyone has gone to bed?)

I actually have a practice where I commit to writing 30 minutes every day at a minimum. I find that consistency is very important because I think of writing like any other form of exercise - sort of like a creative muscle. You have to engage with it on a daily basis as a way of keeping it alive and as a way for you to keep faith that your practice is developing. Maintenance can be extremely difficult and it’s much easier to give up, especially at the beginning when our excitement and aspirations outpace our ability. But I think creating is one of the most valuable and generative things that a person can do and maintaining daily practice is also the only way to surmount that challenge.

Where do you write?

I typically write sitting down at my desk in my bedroom.

What books or stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?

Recently I was inspired by a book called The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Absolutely incredible!

Which writers do you turn to for inspiration?

Two writers I am constantly inspired by are Jhumpa Lahiri and Mahmoud Darwish.

If you have had a story, essay or book published recently, how many drafts did you revise before you finally submitted it? How many hours/months/years (roughly) did you spend on it?

For The Arsonists’ City, I wrote 2 drafts before submitting it and then a 3rd after working with the editor at Houghton Mifflin.

What are you working on now?

I am currently working on a cultural memoir called NOW YOU SEE ME: A Memoir of Erasure and Borderlands. This book expands on the conversation many are currently having about privilege and marginalization and persecution by considering erasure through a liberation psychology lens. This means considering oppressed communities in the context of their sociopolitical structures, and exploring how we often become unwitting participants in our own oppression.

Hala Aylan is a clinical psychologist and author of The Arsonists’ City. Her memoir NOW YOU SEE ME: A Memoir of Erasure and Borderlands is forthcoming from Simon & Shuster. 

For more information, please go to www.halaalyan.com

Q&A with Barbara Trommer

What is your writing process?

For me, writing is a kind of verbal sculpture. I will write a paragraph or sometimes just a sentence that conveys the event or the idea or the description that I have in mind so that I have something to work with, and then look for simpler, more economical, more precise, and, if I can, more powerful and more pleasing ways to express it. Although I often think in generalizations, and will first write an idea in general form, I quickly try to substitute specifics to make my writing more colorful. Thanks to word processing I can keep the first version on my screen for structure as I replace it with successive iterations. I then move everything but the working version to the end of the document or to an “outtakes” document in case I have murdered a darling that I might want to resurrect.

I make considerable use of search engines as I write. I have had instructors who warn against keeping them open because they are potential distractors, but I find them to be a great luxury. I follow all information-seeking whims, and sometimes end up reading more than I write in any given session. I make similar use of the Thesaurus function in Word. I both read and write with my ears and so am sensitive to redundancies. If I have used a word that I like in one sentence but find it would be better suited or better showcased in a subsequent one, I will find a lower valence word for the prior sentence so that the better word is set off to greater advantage. I often use either a search engine or the thesaurus/dictionary to verify that I am using the word correctly.

I should point out here that writing creative non-fiction is, for me, an encore career. I could not afford these extravagances of time if I were writing for a living or facing recurring deadlines.

Do you have a regular writing practice? If so, describe it. (For instance, do you write first thing in the morning for at least one hour? Commit to writing 1,000 words a day? Journal for 15 minutes and see what happens? Write late at night, after everyone has gone to bed? )

I have several writing practices, with the common feature that they exist outside of time. At the risk of sounding like one of Mary Karr’s lightweights (novices, the very young, and hacks—those for whom writing is “fun”), I do not find writing painful. Rather than imposing the discipline of word number or designated time to ensure productivity, I prefer to create the illusion that I have infinite time and no other responsibilities. To do this it helps to live alone and to have considerable tolerance for accumulated laundry, unopened mail, and dishes in the sink. And because housekeeping tasks cannot be ignored indefinitely, I tend to tackle them intensively when I must, and then ignore them for as long as I can to immerse myself in writing.

Walking is often writing time for me—saying sentences in my head or out loud until they sound right and hoping that I will retain them long enough to write them down. Similarly, I will print out a paragraph or an essay in progress to edit on a train or bus.

Writing sometimes wakes me up early—especially if I am working on a submission and am close to the due date. I have learned to appreciate the consolidation that happens during sleep, and the mystery of waking up with just the right solution to a thorny passage.

Where do you write?

I write outside of space as well as time. I do most of my writing in a designated “clean well-lighted place”—a desk in my office/second bedroom/guestroom with a tower computer, two monitors, small trivet for hot tea, and a heated massage chair. But I also have a tablet with a keyboard on my kitchen table, a laptop that lives on the other side of my bed, and another on a small desk in my bedroom. I have recently started to make use of Microsoft’s OneDrive, which enables me to access a current document draft from any of those.

Pen collections of all brands and colors are everywhere in my apartment as are the spiral notebooks that Staples has for $0.50 during August back-to-school sales. I use these to write down thoughts or expressions when it is not convenient to open a document on a computer, or when I want the spatial organization of an outline that I can create more quickly with pen and paper than in an electronic document. The margins of my crossword puzzles and my grocery lists are often repositories for intrusive musings. I usually try to consolidate these paper scraps at my main desk to be sure they are included in the piece I am writing.

What books or stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?

I have recently become a fan of Anne Roiphe and have read several of her memoirs. Her daughter, Emily Carter, whom I discovered inadvertently, has a fresh uninhibited style. A long-term project is to read Proust’s Recherche—only a few pages per day but every page is extraordinary. I like reading Jill LePore, Janet Maslin, David Remnick.

Do you read actual books, on Kindle, on Audible, borrow from library?

I definitely read actual books. I like to live in my books and often read with a pencil. Abebooks.com, which I believe is now owned by Amazon, has very inexpensive copies (often <$5) of many books I have wanted to own—and that has enabled me to bypass the library. I read on my Kindle or on the app, but usually buy hard copies even if I am reading electronically. I listen to books, usually with Librivox or Internet Archive but again, like to own the hard copy. Sometimes I have used Amazon’s Whispersync Voice technology on Audible, which enables one to switch back and forth between listening and reading without losing one’s place.

Which writers do you turn to for inspiration?

I don’t deliberately turn to specific writers for inspiration, although I am clearly influenced and inspired by good writers—also by lives well-lived. I started reading biographies when I was very young and have never stopped. David McCullough on John Adams, Meredith Daneman on Margot Fonteyn, Jane De Hart on Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I loved the diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I try to reread or listen to classics (Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, Wuthering Heights, Bleak House) from time to time. It helps to have a daughter who was an English major in charge of selections.

If you have had a story, essay or book published recently, how many drafts did you revise before you finally submitted it? How many hours (roughly) did you spend on it?

That’s a difficult question because revisions are an integral part of my writing process and happen at so many levels. My “first” drafts have almost always been revised multiple times in the writing, word by word and sentence by sentence. I reread each paragraph as I write, and often reread from the beginning to the current paragraph, modifying anything that seems unclear or that I think I can say better. I revise again at later stages when I read for organization and sequence—sometimes repositioning paragraphs and always trimming the language. The last few readings, especially if there is enough time to set the work aside for a while, almost always reveal ideas for improvement that have not been obvious in previous drafts. Sometimes, as in the case of an essay on “First Dates” that I just submitted, it is only in the writing that I figure out what I mean to say. For the last paragraph of that essay, which ended up being 85 words out of 2,489, I have 1,041 words of “outtakes.” I estimate that I spent 30 hours over the course of a week (8 of them in an all-nighter the night before the due date, at least 4 of them on that paragraph) to produce those 2,489 words, not counting the involuntary intrusions into ballet classes and crossword puzzles.

What are you working on now?

I hope to produce a book of memoir essays. I did not anticipate this when I took my first writing course (with Laura) five years ago, but much of what I write takes the form of a love letter to my late husband. It was Sidney Offit (Memoir of the Bookie's Son) who first pointed out to me that certain events or life experiences--in his case, being the child of an outlaw-- while troublesome or tragic, may provide the unique angle that makes a story compelling. He also emphasized that it is possible to tell one’s story in a collection of essays rather than as a chronologic account of facts. For me that is the essence of creative non-fiction: my accomplishments will never merit a biography or autobiography, but if I can tell my story well enough, even episodically, it may find a modest audience.

Barbara Trommer is a retired child neurologist living in New York City. Recently published work includes Kitchen Ballet and A Widow’s Bed. She can be found on LinkedIn.