Ask the Author: Margaret Combs
Answered Questions (8)
Margaret Combs
So many!
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Homecoming by Yaa Gyasi
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Homecoming by Yaa Gyasi
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Margaret Combs
About ten years ago I noticed an explosion of information on autism, both scientific and psychological. Most of it focused toward parents. There was a plethora of attention on the early diagnosis, the genetic research, and early intervention. What I did not see was the sibling experience: i did not see the inner turmoil of a family going through this profound upheaval and especially over the arc of a lifetime. I sensed that, like me, there were siblings that needed this story: and honest rendering that did not sugarcoat autism into a neatly packaged blessing, but told it with the emotional complexity and compassion of a sister.
Margaret Combs
I hear a question that begs for an answer. Not a simplistic answer but a complex and ambiguous one. I believe the most intriguing and confounding thing about being alive is that we do not know all of the answers, and we are still on a quest to know more, to understand the marvelous mystery of being alive. There are countless conundrums to write about, to add wisdom to and explore in a way that is human and authentic. This is how we grow more wise as a species, as a continuum of intelligence.
Margaret Combs
A fictional story in the 1930s on a small island.
Margaret Combs
In the beginning, listen to your inner voice - follow its lead. Divorce yourself from any ambition but telling the story intentionally and sincerely, as if you were sitting around a fire with three friends in the middle of a desert. Picture yourself there. Tell them what you know.
Margaret Combs
Stepping through the doorway of a page and entering into the world of the story. Every time I put my pen to paper the potential is endless - it is a dance between my intention and what the story has to say back to me. It is the partnership between those two that fuels the creative process.
Margaret Combs
I believe writer's block arises from the spectre of the editor/critic sitting on the shoulder of every writer. Whether an author is tackling the first or fifteenth book, he/she must begin every chapter as if no one will ever see these words on the page. The work needs the privacy of the unknown, inside a room of no consequence, and in an obscure part of town.
Margaret Combs
The apparition that appears in the chapter of my memoir titled "Apparition" continues to intrigue me. It's complexity could be the plot for a book.
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