Ask the Author: Lara Lillibridge
Answered Questions (24)
Lara Lillibridge
1. What inspired you to write?
I always loved reading and enjoyed writing, but didn't think I had a book-length story. Everyone told me I should write about my family, but I didn't know how. When I was pregnant at age 34, suddenly I was flooded with stories and could not stop. I wrote over 400 pages in four months. I went back to school and learned everything I could about writing.
2. Writer's block
If I am not burning up with the need to write something, I read. Reading always triggers an idea.
3, Advice for aspiring authors
Read every day and write every day. Write whatever you want to, even if other people don't believe in your story. If a story lives inside you, write it no matter if you think it is marketable or not. The world needs your stories.
I always loved reading and enjoyed writing, but didn't think I had a book-length story. Everyone told me I should write about my family, but I didn't know how. When I was pregnant at age 34, suddenly I was flooded with stories and could not stop. I wrote over 400 pages in four months. I went back to school and learned everything I could about writing.
2. Writer's block
If I am not burning up with the need to write something, I read. Reading always triggers an idea.
3, Advice for aspiring authors
Read every day and write every day. Write whatever you want to, even if other people don't believe in your story. If a story lives inside you, write it no matter if you think it is marketable or not. The world needs your stories.
Lara Lillibridge
Never stop writing. I often look up grammar questions on the internet while I am writing. There are many great books on grammar you can read as well, but please keep writing!
Lara Lillibridge
No, I haven't.
Lara Lillibridge
Yes, it is nonfiction.
Lara Lillibridge
I always write in MS Word on a Mac. I have tried other programs but I'm inherently resistant to change. I always have an internet window open for thesaurus.com, M-w.com and google to look up weird things. I hate to write by hand—I always have a Note going on my phone of writing ideas.
Lara Lillibridge
I think you meant this for someone else.
Lara Lillibridge
I think the first step is letting go of the idea of perfection. None of us can ever be perfect. The best we can hope for is to write a little better than we did before. Besides, I think perfect is probably boring.
Lara Lillibridge
Never stop. Everyone's words are important. The world needs all our voices.
Lara Lillibridge
This is the great question we are all wondering about! I wish I had taken a class in marketing!
Lara Lillibridge
It really depends on the material and how often I get distracted. My goal is to write 1,000 words at a stretch, which can be done in two hours most days. Some days I write and delete over and over and come up with only a few hundred words. Somedays I throw out everything I wrote the day before. Favorite books are hard. Here are some books I've read multiple times and still cherish:
"The Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien
"Written on the Body" by Jeanette Winterson
"Chronology of Water" by Lidia Yuknavitch
"The Body" by Jenny Boully
"The Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien
"Written on the Body" by Jeanette Winterson
"Chronology of Water" by Lidia Yuknavitch
"The Body" by Jenny Boully
Lara Lillibridge
For me, there are chapters I'm burning to write, and "filler" chapters that fall into what I think the reader needs to know in order to get to the interesting stuff. Start writing the interesting stuff first, instead of starting at the beginning. Good luck!
Lara Lillibridge
I have one dog. He's a rat terrier and nearly 14 years old. He's mostly blind and nearly deaf but very sweet.
Lara Lillibridge
This is such a hard question! The most important book I ever read was called "The Jet" and it was able a kid who hit a man in the head with a toy jet and his hat fell in the mud. I say it is the most important because it was the very first book I ever read all by myself, and so that book opened the door to all other books to come. But favorites...I can't pick just one.
Lara Lillibridge
I had my book on Net Galley, which allows reviewers to access a digital copy for free.
Lara Lillibridge
Once your book is on Goodreads anyone can leave a review, so people with advance reader copies can review as soon as they've read it.
Lara Lillibridge
I think the difference between people who are told they should write a book, or who tell themselves that someday they will write a book and the people who actually write books is a passion for the act of writing. Everyone has a story worth telling. The rewriting and editing and pitching and advertising is something you have to really enjoy doing in order to take a first draft to a finished product—or, if not enjoy, at least have the patience and fortitude to survive the process.
Lara Lillibridge
I think if you write from your heart people will like it. With memoir, we know the basic plot elements before we write—we lived them—so the question was when to stop. For me, I started at the beginning. I planned to stop at several different places, but still had more to say, so kept going. But other people start at the end, or middle and write in different directions, and those books can be very compelling. I think once you have a significant chunk written (and I wrote out of order, and I remembered things) then it is easier to move the pieces around into an order than you feel tells the story best.
Lara Lillibridge
For me, my book got too long. I had to focus on on area, and leave the rest for another book.
Lara Lillibridge
Ved, I think many of us can relate to painful stories. In some ways, I think a lot of memoir is the story of overcoming or redemption. Someone out there is waiting to read your story. Keep writing and thanks for asking!
Lara Lillibridge
When people heard that my mom was a lesbian and my dad married 7 times, everyone said, "you should write a book someday!" So I think it was in my head from a very young age. I wanted to become a writer in high school, but gave up on it as impractical. In my 30s I became flooded with stories when I was pregnant, and started writing in every free minute, but much of my fiction was heavily colored by my past, so I knew I had to get this memoir out of my system so I could write something else. Thanks for asking!
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more