After TLIH was published, I had about 10 wonderful years
during which I wrote two other novels and had started a third when I needed to
find a paying job. Wonderful until the third one, like the second, did not
sell.
Unlike a lot of writers, I actually liked doing it. I loved
visiting my imaginary world, letting my characters loose. But I can’t figure out how to do it now, how
to sustain it. I feel I’ve gotten so far
away from writing, that I don’t know how to get back.
Not writing is one of the things I chastise myself for when I
wake up at 3 in the am. The other morning, trying to calm down enough to fall
back asleep, I remembered how I started writing TLIH., how it was kind of a
last ditch effort and how I did it to help myself through a difficult time.
It was 1980-something in New York City and I was a clerk in
a junior sportswear buying office at Saks Fifth Avenue. This was in a closet
that had been converted – sort of – into an office. There was just room for the
three of us, the buyer, assistant buyer and me. There were no computers.
I know. Hard to imagine.
There were three telephones, but no keyboards not even a type-writer but
we had pads of yellow paper.
The two buyers were young women, both stylish and ambitious
and very good to me. But they were usually out of the office down in the
garment district or out on the floor. I
was left alone in our closet with work, as I remember, didn’t demand much from
me.
Being married didn’t help. My actor husband was on tour that
lasted about three months.
I remember feeling that I was forgetting how to talk, that
my brain was turning to mush, that I was going crazy.
One morning, I thought of the story that had been rattling
around in my head for a couple of years, of the SS guy weeping on the Ambassador
Dodd’s sofa. The ambassador had a daughter and I knew she was in love with the
guy. I told myself I should write it down, though I had no idea how to do that.
But these scenes played out in my head and all I had to do was write them down.
I’d write them using present tense. I’d write it like a script. I was an actor.
I was comfortable with a script.
I pulled one of the pads of yellow paper over and started.
One thing led to another and about five years later, I had
1000 pages and a couple years after that, a book.
Imagine that.
