Ask the Author: Heather Lende
Answered Questions (9)
Heather Lende
I don't know. Thanks for asking. My hunch is no, since it is kind of a little book...
Heather Lende
Hi Ginger, thanks for writing, and I'm sorry if I didn't respond sooner. I am not very good at Goodreads (funny, I know). I don't know what I am going to write about next-- but I bet my new bike will be in it...
Heather Lende
Thank you for writing me! That is a hard question. (They tend to be ones I just read.) But, here are five infulential books that I loved:
Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, Saint Maybe Anne Tyler, Ellen Gilchrist stories- Drunk with Love or Victory over Japan, or anything she's ever written.. and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (and all of her novels.) I love Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs and that Old Cape Cod Magic, I loved Stewart O'Nan's Emily Alone and The Odds, Ann Patchett, Anna Quindlen, Larry McMurtry and Ivan Doig-- and Kent Haruf!! Read his novels Plainsong, Benediction, Eventide (I think?) and Our Soul's at Night in order. Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird are favorites, and for obit writers, Marilyn Johnson's The Dead Beat is great, as is The Last Word, the NY Times book of obituaries. Non fiction favorites are Calvin Trillin's essays, Ruth Reichl, and have you read Simon Winchester? He's a witty Englishman who writes well about big things-- China, the making of the Oxford dictionary.. that sort of thing. One more, a poet ( I love poetry, Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins.. Thomas Lynch is his name, and he's an undertaker. Find him, you will be glad. I also can get stuck for a whole weekend in a Jo-Ann Mapson novel, and she has about 12 so that's good news. Anyway, I better stop now. Or I never will.
Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, Saint Maybe Anne Tyler, Ellen Gilchrist stories- Drunk with Love or Victory over Japan, or anything she's ever written.. and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (and all of her novels.) I love Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs and that Old Cape Cod Magic, I loved Stewart O'Nan's Emily Alone and The Odds, Ann Patchett, Anna Quindlen, Larry McMurtry and Ivan Doig-- and Kent Haruf!! Read his novels Plainsong, Benediction, Eventide (I think?) and Our Soul's at Night in order. Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird are favorites, and for obit writers, Marilyn Johnson's The Dead Beat is great, as is The Last Word, the NY Times book of obituaries. Non fiction favorites are Calvin Trillin's essays, Ruth Reichl, and have you read Simon Winchester? He's a witty Englishman who writes well about big things-- China, the making of the Oxford dictionary.. that sort of thing. One more, a poet ( I love poetry, Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins.. Thomas Lynch is his name, and he's an undertaker. Find him, you will be glad. I also can get stuck for a whole weekend in a Jo-Ann Mapson novel, and she has about 12 so that's good news. Anyway, I better stop now. Or I never will.
Heather Lende
I am at the tail end of the Find the Good book tour and all the hoopla that comes with publication. (The let down part, actually, where I am home after a month of traveling and the dog and the garden and the chickens and the husband and the mail and the community I live in all need my attention. As soon as the dishes and laundry are done -- tomorrow I'm cleaning the kitchen cupboards--- I will get to revising a novel I have written that I hope to publish. It's called A Hole in the Middle of a Pretty Good Heart.
Heather Lende
Read a lot, especially from the types of the writers you hope to become. If you want to be a mystery writer, read mysteries, if you want to write sports columns, read sports writers. All writers benefit from poetry. Reading a poem every morning should be a kind of Daily Devotion for every writer. As to publication, begin small. Write little pieces you can finish. Don't start with the Great American Novel, write a 700 word essay or story first and send it off to a literary journal or newspaper or blog.
Heather Lende
It's a nice life, to look around and listen and write about it, and it's very nice when people read what I write and are moved to laugh, or cry sometimes, or just to say "I know just what she means," and they tell me. That's huge.
Heather Lende
Deadlines help. I was a columnist for years, and there's nothing like a deadline to inspire a writer. Also, Mary Oliver is right about not being a tourist in your own life- and being perpared to be astonished and talking about it-- and it may be why I don't really ever get "blocked" -- I just head out the door prepared to be astonished, and expecting to tell people about it- and when I do, that pretty much happens. The harder thing is to find the time needed to shape that moment-- that event-- that bright shiny light that caught my eye, into words that bring it to life on a page to someone who wasn't there with me. That just takes time, and rewrites, and time, and more edits. Some pieces work better than others.
Heather Lende
I am a storyteller at heart-- and I live in a remarkable place-- Haines, Alaska-- full or extraordinary people that I can't help but telling everyone about.
Heather Lende
It came from an essay I was asked to write on what advice I'd give my grandchildren on my deathbed. "Find the good!" I said, surprising myself. I figured if they do that, the rest will fall into place.
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