FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Why tackle a controversial subject like abortion in a novel?

To get readers thinking about the issue from a variety of perspectives. All too often these days, the word “abortion” leads people to dig in their heels somewhere on the political spectrum. There are plenty of op-ed pieces out there dissecting the issue; I wanted to explore it from a much more personal point of view. How does an abortion provider continue to perform abortions when she herself is pregnant? How does she deal with the news that her 16-week-old baby has Down syndrome? What does a teenager do when her parents are pressuring her to terminate the pregnancy, but her boyfriend and his family want just the opposite? These aren’t situations that normally come to mind when people are labeling themselves “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” Abortion is a complicated, personal issue, and I think we need some intelligent conversations that go beyond one’s political leanings. Anna Quindlen wrote a great article about this in Newsweek, called Life Begins At Conversation. We so need to get away from the red state/blue state polemics.

Was there something specific that sparked the idea?

Actually, the novel began with two very distinct, concrete images: that of a woman swimming alone in her lap pool at night, while outside a blizzard raged; and that of a woman wearily telling her daughter’s ex-boyfriend to “quit groveling.” Beyond that, I’ve been circling around the issue of abortion in much of my writing; the main character in Monoosook Valley faces an unplanned pregnancy at a time when her own children are about to fly the nest.

But ultimately the will-she-or-won’t-she question doesn’t provide a lot of literary meat. If I was going to write about abortion head-on – which I wanted to do – I needed to tell a story that turned a lot of perspectives upside down. Which I think makes for a much stronger novel.

What about the title? It’s pretty controversial. Did you consider any others?

Oh yes! The working title for the novel was Rock Paper Scissors – certainly a perfectly serviceable title, but it could have referred to any number of novels out there. At some point late in the game, I suddenly flashed on Megan’s role as the daughter of a highly controversial public figure, a woman whom many people saw as an abortionist, a word with all sorts of negative connotations. It seemed perfect. I submitted the book under that title, and nobody could imagine anything else.

How did you research the medical and police angles?

For the medical side, I relied on books and the internet. There’s a wonderful memoir by Suzanne Poppema, called Why I Am an Abortion Doctor, which takes you into the mindset of a very dedicated woman. I found it immensely helpful. Another book I relied on was Cynthia Gorney’s Articles of Faith, which chronicles both sides of the abortion issue here in the US. And finally, you can learn just about anything you want about the medical procedure on the internet.

As for the police angle, I enrolled in Boulder’s very own Citizen’s Police Academy! I even have a diploma! For ten weeks, we met on Wednesday evenings and learned about different aspects of the department – dispatch, investigations, search and seizure law, etc. The best part was going out in a squad car on a Friday night with a patrol officer. Mostly we busted up college keg parties – although I’ll add that the patrol officer was far more concerned with kids’ safety than arrests. It was through this program that I met a very helpful detective, Jack Gardner, who answered a lot of questions for me about police procedure, things you never learn in law school.

You’ve written three other novels, but none of them center around a murder. Why now?

I came to a point a few years back where I wanted to light a match under my fiction. When you teach (and I was teaching in the public schools, through Young Audiences’ artist-in-residence program), you start to look at your work more critically, and I wanted to challenge myself by writing something that was a little more plot-driven than my earlier novels. Since I have a law degree, I thought, well hey, might as well take on a murder. Of course, it was much more difficult than I ever imagined. But it taught me a lot.

How do you schedule your writing time?

I keep school hours – as soon as my kids are off to school, I write. I’d like to say that I write every day, but I confess that I don’t get a whole lot done during the summers, when everybody is around the house. Sometimes it’s good to let a project sit on the back burner for a while. Usually I’ll go back to a novel in September and see things that I never saw before, like structural problems and solutions. So it’s a good break.

What authors have inspired you?

First and foremost, Anne Tyler. When I read Dinner At the Homesick Restaurant, I was completely drawn in by her characters, who are so quirky and vulnerable and likable and imperfect. I love books written from different points of view – if I’d ever gone on to get a PhD in English, I would have written my dissertation on Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools is another big-time favorite. John Updike for his detail (the Rabbit trilogy), Scott Turow for his elegance, Richard Russo for his characters.

Other writers I love: Anne Lamott, Flannery O’Connor, Sara Davidson (read Cowboy!), Elizabeth Strout, Ron Carlson, Sapphire, and Mary Karr. And doesn’t everyone has a favorite little-known gem? Mine is a memoir by Patricia McCairen, called Canyon Solitude: A Woman’s Solo River Journey Through Grand Canyon.

Crazy As Chocolate is about another raw topic: mental illness and suicide. In that novel, you tell a story about two sisters growing up with a suicidal mother. Where’d the idea for that come from?

I’d written a short story (never published) in which there was a peripheral character, a mother, who was mentally unbalanced. But she was just a simple hypochondriac, and when I put the story away she kept nagging me, and I knew I had to write a novel about her and amplify her mental problems.

At the same time, my children were young, and there were many times when I felt like a horrible failure of a mother. Mimi, the mother in Crazy, embodied my worst fears. She says things I thought of saying, but didn’t; she does things I thought of doing, but didn’t. (Although just to clarify things, I was never suicidal, nor is/was my own dear and wonderful mother, who is about as sane as they come.) Mimi was me, living out my worst nightmares as a parent.

What’s the most difficult part of writing for you?

Getting back to work on a manuscript after being away from it for a while. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t manage much work time in the summer. And, while the break will eventually prove invaluable, nevertheless I hate that first day of sitting down and re-reading those pages I last saw in June. I’d rather do anything else. In fact, it’s during September that my passion for vacuuming becomes rather intense.

What are you working on right now? Is it another mystery?

I wouldn’t call it a mystery. It’s a novel about a river trip through the Grand Canyon. I don’t know if it will have a mystery in it. I’m not trying to be coy, I just don’t know. Right now I’m still getting to know my characters.

What advice do you have for beginning writers?

Go do other things! Travel, read, work as a waitress, sail ships, go to law school, whatever – I think you need to live other lives. But that being said, I also think creative writing classes – whether as part of a degree program, or through writers’ conferences – are extremely helpful to teach you what not to do. As for what to do, of course, you have to figure that out for yourself.

And read good stuff! Read the kind of stuff you want to write. If you want to write literary fiction, read it, and don’t even let trashy fiction into your house. If you want to write crime, read the very best crime writers. And when I say read, I mean study-read. Underline passages that work, and ask yourself why they work, and what the writer did or didn’t do to make it that way. You’ll be a slow reader, but a better writer.

The town in The Abortionist’s Daughter very much resembles Boulder, where you live. Why not simply name it?

I didn’t want to be locked into the factual details. If you name a town, then everything you write has to be factually accurate. Is the coroner appointed or elected? Is the police department downtown or out by the mall? Is it Magnolia Road, or Sugarloaf? Things like that matter, if you name the town.

At what point do you know how a novel is going to end?

Not until I’ve written and rewritten it seven or eight times. Usually the way I work is, I will write 70% of a novel, then go back and reread it – and discover I need to rewrite the whole thing. The next time I might get 75% through – and then I go back. This goes on and on until on the 8th or 9th draft I am finally 98% there – and the ending suddenly becomes obvious.

On the other hand, while I don’t know exactly how it will end during much of the writing process, I usually have a sense of where I want to be at the end of the novel, emotionally. It’s like going to France – you know you want to get there, but you don’t know if you’ll go via the English Channel, or via China. You find out as you’re going.

Questions?