Ask the Author: Laura Bonazzoli
Answered Questions (5)
Laura Bonazzoli
For me, the best thing about being a writer is giving myself a space to explore my own questions about the experience of being alive. And of course I'm always thrilled when I learn that my explorations in fiction have spoken to someone else who has the same questions.
Laura Bonazzoli
In the summer of 2016, I drove from Maine to Massachusetts to visit my aunt. Although more than two years had passed since my mother’s death, I was struck by the freshness of my aunt’s grief. As I sat in her kitchen, she told me the familiar story of how their mother, my maternal grandmother, had been admitted to a tuberculosis sanatorium in 1932, when my mother was three years old and my aunt was five. “When she went away,” my aunt told me, “I knew I had to take care of your mother. It was up to me. And I felt that way all my life.” My aunt had never married, and in the last decades of her life, had left Boston and returned to her hometown, the same town where my mother lived. And until my mother’s death, they’d visited or phoned each other every day. Now, without her sister to care for, my aunt was bereft. As she spoke that day, her gaze wandered from the teacups to the windows to the kitchen door, as if she was still hoping to find her little sister somewhere.
The day I got home from that visit, I opened my laptop and began to write the first chapter of a story of two sisters whose mother, in 1933, is admitted to a tuberculosis sanatorium. As I worked, I “heard” the voice of the younger sister, Glory, frightened and confused by her mother’s sudden absence. The next day, I began writing a second chapter, this one in the voice of the older sister, Violet, who stifles her own fears by taking care of her little sister. Without thinking consciously about it, I’d begun writing a dual-narrative novel that, after eight years and eighteen drafts, I called Our Share of Morning.
The day I got home from that visit, I opened my laptop and began to write the first chapter of a story of two sisters whose mother, in 1933, is admitted to a tuberculosis sanatorium. As I worked, I “heard” the voice of the younger sister, Glory, frightened and confused by her mother’s sudden absence. The next day, I began writing a second chapter, this one in the voice of the older sister, Violet, who stifles her own fears by taking care of her little sister. Without thinking consciously about it, I’d begun writing a dual-narrative novel that, after eight years and eighteen drafts, I called Our Share of Morning.
Laura Bonazzoli
One of the most helpful statements for writers that I've ever encountered is: An idea is not a story. To create a story--literature--you have to put in the quiet hours at the notebook or screen letting the ideas flow from your imagination to the page. When anxiety or writer's block makes me want to procrastinate, I give myself a time limit: I will sit at my laptop for one hour, I tell myself, and if nothing comes, that's okay. Invariably, something does come. Trust your imagination. Trust the silence.
Laura Bonazzoli
Back in 2016, I began writing a novel about two sisters, set between 1933 and 1950. Now that Consecration Pond has been published, I've gotten back to work on it. I believe this is the 14th draft! Here's the one-minute synopsis:
In a mill town west of Boston, in a low-rent triple-decker, the artist in the third-floor apartment hangs a portrait of unforgettable beauty: a woman named Ada who disappeared at the age of twenty-three. In the apartment below, a family unravels: a newborn dies, a mother falls ill, and sisters Glory and Violet learn that nothing--not even a bargain with God--can shield them from loss. Unaware as the years pass of the ways the mysterious Ada haunts their lives, the sisters--now young adults--find themselves enacting a grim repetition of their family's past. To break free, each must confront a decades-old betrayal, and forge separate paths to forgiveness and authentic love.
Set in the final decades of the tuberculosis pandemic, in a world ruled by inequality, superstition, and misogyny, This Bright Limit is the story of two sisters' struggles to overcome their fate, accept the losses of the past, and consecrate what remains.
In a mill town west of Boston, in a low-rent triple-decker, the artist in the third-floor apartment hangs a portrait of unforgettable beauty: a woman named Ada who disappeared at the age of twenty-three. In the apartment below, a family unravels: a newborn dies, a mother falls ill, and sisters Glory and Violet learn that nothing--not even a bargain with God--can shield them from loss. Unaware as the years pass of the ways the mysterious Ada haunts their lives, the sisters--now young adults--find themselves enacting a grim repetition of their family's past. To break free, each must confront a decades-old betrayal, and forge separate paths to forgiveness and authentic love.
Set in the final decades of the tuberculosis pandemic, in a world ruled by inequality, superstition, and misogyny, This Bright Limit is the story of two sisters' struggles to overcome their fate, accept the losses of the past, and consecrate what remains.
Laura Bonazzoli
I have a variety of strategies for dealing with writer's block, but the one that seems to have helped the most over the years is to set a timer to one hour, sit at the laptop, and tell myself that I have to try to write/revise for the next sixty minutes, and if I produce nothing, that's okay. Typically, what happens is that, when the timer goes off, I'm deep into the work and keep going. But even when the hour feels "wasted," I know it isn't. Eliminating non-productive paths is one way of moving forward. For more on this, see my blog post of April, 2022 on my website at laurabonazzoli.com.
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