Ask the Author: Lucy Ferriss
Answered Questions (6)
Lucy Ferriss
See above, about keeping the fanny in the seat. I write badly, I forgive myself for writing badly, then I write badly some more. You've got to wear the block down, or it will wear you down.
Lucy Ferriss
Working in your bathrobe.
Lucy Ferriss
Read. Read the great works of literature if you can. But if that's not your thing, then read whatever you love reading. Get language into your mouth, your eyes, your ears, your soul. Painters have oils, brushes, canvas, light. You have words, syntax, punctuation. Make them yours.
Lucy Ferriss
A novel set during the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904, in which a young woman suffering from what we would now call obsessive-compulsive disorder finds herself working alongside ideologically motivated "anthropologists" to categorize (she loves categorizing) the various Native peoples who were brought to the Fair and placed in so-called "living dioramas" for tourists to gawk at. I'm not sure how things will turn out, but I grew up in St. Louis, and the World's Fair has always fascinated me, so I'm plunging in.
Lucy Ferriss
I don't. I get inspired to look, and listen, and poke around in other people's business. And then I make myself sit down in front of the keyboard. And if I'm lucky, and I keep my fanny in the seat long enough, I'm writing.
Lucy Ferriss
The best answer to this question is on my website at http://lucyferriss.com/books/a-sister.... But to put the parts together quickly here: the idea came from the squash team at Trinity College, where I teach, and from my speculating about what would happen if one of its young athletes brought his sister over to the States to study . . . and she fell, inappropriately, in love. My curiosity led me forward from there to Pakistan and beyond, and eventually to the story in A SISTER TO HONOR.
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