Ask the Author: Barbara Braendlein
Answered Questions (6)
Barbara Braendlein
I am excited to have you read it! This book is a fictionalized version of my eldest daughter's early years, so essentially I spent a lot of time down on the floor with her, seeing the world through her eyes and trying to figure out what everything felt like to her.
Barbara Braendlein
The best thing about being writer is having a built in way to process life. It gives me the freedom to pause and make sense of all the things we face as humans -- grief, love, joy, trauma. To write it, for me, is to embrace it.
Barbara Braendlein
You have a story. And someone needs to hear your story, only yours. Don't stop writing when you are stuck. Write badly if you must, but don't stop writing! Because your story matters.
Barbara Braendlein
Right now, I am working on a novel about a character suffering from dissociative identity disorder. I am drawn to untold stories, and multiple personalities is a condition that seems to only ever be written as something violent and terrifying. A compassionate tale of this mental illness feels like a story that deserves telling.
Barbara Braendlein
I am inspired by ordinary things -- the quiet thrills that exist in our mundane lives, like the way bread rises in a bowl or the way a mother can look at her child after an exhausting day full of diapers and tantrums and still find that child beautiful! If I really want to be driven to write, I read Emily's Quest again, by L.M. Montgomery. It always makes my fingers itch to write!
Barbara Braendlein
Olive is a fictionalized version of my eldest daughter's early years. I have found fiction to be a freeing way to process the adventures of our life in a way that is easier for people to grasp and understand!
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