Ask the Author: Gail Gilmore
Answered Questions (4)
Gail Gilmore
I'm currently working on a narrative non-fiction book about a shelter dog whose epic two-year, mostly-solo journey through three New England states eventually leads him, through a series of twists and turns, to a family who needs him as much as he needs them.
Gail Gilmore
Summer 2021: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; Mirrorland; Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton; The Final Revival of Opal & Nev; Clap When You Land; The Midnight Library; Moxie; Girl A; Wild Women and the Blues; The Divines; Blind Turn; The Lost Apothecary.
The Fact of a Body, The Girls, Marlena, She's Not There, Rabbit Cake, Be Safe I Love You.
The Fact of a Body, The Girls, Marlena, She's Not There, Rabbit Cake, Be Safe I Love You.
Gail Gilmore
Now that my second book, "Solomon: One Dog's Improbable, Two-Year, Thousand-Mile Journey to Find Home" is two weeks away from its publication date, it's time to write an updated answer to this question!
"Solomon" is the true story, told in creative non-fiction as opposed to journalistic style, of a shelter dog named Solomon who spent two years traveling on his own through New England after being pulled from a high-kill shelter in GA and fostered in ME. Apparently knowing, in whatever ways dogs know these kinds of things, that his true home and family were elsewhere, he bolted from his foster home a month after his arrival and began his southward journey through ME, a sliver of NH, and MA, where he finally settled into an abandoned shed in a peninsula town south of Boston. Meanwhile, a team of dog recovery and rescue folks were trying desperately to catch him and bring him to safety. But Solomon outwitted them nearly every step of the way in his quest to find home.
I got the idea for the book while volunteering for the same dog recovery organization that was trying to recover Solomon. I was working on another case, a dog name Marisol who'd been missing for over a year at the time. While going back and forth into a large conservation area to set and check cameras and a feeding station after a confirmed sighting of Marisol, a fellow volunteer on team Marisol kept me informed on another case she was tangentially involved in - a dog named Solomon who'd been on his own for nearly two years. I was intrigued and awed, and soon became as invested as everyone else in Solomon's story and its (hopefully) happy ending. With every new effort to recover him, my heart soared, and with every failure (there were many) crashed. When this is all over, I thought, I'm going to write a book about this incredible dog and his amazing story. This is that book.
I got the idea for "Dog Church" from the experience of living with and caring for my dog Chispa, who had Canine Cognitive Dysfunction, a neurological disease much like Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia in people. The process of deciding whether or not it was time to let Chispa go was a very difficult one, forcing me to confront not only my complicated emotions regarding my deep love for her, but the many questions for which there were no concrete answers. During this time, I found comfort and, ultimately, the answers that had eluded me, through reading some of the thousands and thousands of notes left behind by visitors to the Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in memory of their own dogs. I've sometimes felt alone in the loss of an animal, or in the making of the types of decisions that almost everyone who loves a companion animal ultimately has to make. But reading and being in the presence of these notes, thinking about the people and dogs represented by each one, made me realize I wasn't alone at all, and I thought that many other people would find comfort in knowing they aren't alone, either.
"Solomon" is the true story, told in creative non-fiction as opposed to journalistic style, of a shelter dog named Solomon who spent two years traveling on his own through New England after being pulled from a high-kill shelter in GA and fostered in ME. Apparently knowing, in whatever ways dogs know these kinds of things, that his true home and family were elsewhere, he bolted from his foster home a month after his arrival and began his southward journey through ME, a sliver of NH, and MA, where he finally settled into an abandoned shed in a peninsula town south of Boston. Meanwhile, a team of dog recovery and rescue folks were trying desperately to catch him and bring him to safety. But Solomon outwitted them nearly every step of the way in his quest to find home.
I got the idea for the book while volunteering for the same dog recovery organization that was trying to recover Solomon. I was working on another case, a dog name Marisol who'd been missing for over a year at the time. While going back and forth into a large conservation area to set and check cameras and a feeding station after a confirmed sighting of Marisol, a fellow volunteer on team Marisol kept me informed on another case she was tangentially involved in - a dog named Solomon who'd been on his own for nearly two years. I was intrigued and awed, and soon became as invested as everyone else in Solomon's story and its (hopefully) happy ending. With every new effort to recover him, my heart soared, and with every failure (there were many) crashed. When this is all over, I thought, I'm going to write a book about this incredible dog and his amazing story. This is that book.
I got the idea for "Dog Church" from the experience of living with and caring for my dog Chispa, who had Canine Cognitive Dysfunction, a neurological disease much like Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia in people. The process of deciding whether or not it was time to let Chispa go was a very difficult one, forcing me to confront not only my complicated emotions regarding my deep love for her, but the many questions for which there were no concrete answers. During this time, I found comfort and, ultimately, the answers that had eluded me, through reading some of the thousands and thousands of notes left behind by visitors to the Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in memory of their own dogs. I've sometimes felt alone in the loss of an animal, or in the making of the types of decisions that almost everyone who loves a companion animal ultimately has to make. But reading and being in the presence of these notes, thinking about the people and dogs represented by each one, made me realize I wasn't alone at all, and I thought that many other people would find comfort in knowing they aren't alone, either.
Gail Gilmore
My best advice for aspiring writers is to find the time in your day to write for 1.5 hours, every day. This is advice that was passed along to me by a writer I met at a writing conference in Boston. I was having difficulty making time for my writing, and was squeezing it in at work, during my lunch hour. While this strategy did produce content, it also made me feel fragmented and stressed out, because I didn't think I was totally present for either writing or my job. After listening thoughtfully, the writer told me I simply needed to get up early enough in the morning to write for 1.5 hours, *before* I went to work. It was the only way I was going to be able to carve out the time to create the daily discipline a writer needs. "But that would mean I have to get up at 5 a.m.," I objected. "So, get up at 5 a.m. then." "Well, I'm not really a morning person...I don't think anything I wrote at that hour would be very good," I responded. "Maybe not," she agreed. "But at least you can edit bad writing, right? You can't edit a blank page." I had to admit she had a point there. Still, it would be three months before I decided to take her advice, and it turned out to be the best advice anyone had given me on this particular stumbling block to my writing. The first couple of weeks were difficult, and I hated pretty much everything I wrote. But then a funny thing happened: the process became easier, my writing became more cohesive, and I realized that the early morning was actually a very creatively fertile time for me. My day had yet to happen to me, my neighborhood was still and quiet, and because of these things my writing was free of the defenses we all construct to get through our days. Through getting up at 5 a.m and sitting down to write from 5:30-7:00 a.m., I was able to finally finish and edit my memoir Dog Church. If I hadn't had the good fortune to be seated next to this particular writer at a conference lunch, I'd probably still be writing it!
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