Lisa’s Comments (group member since Jul 21, 2011)

Lisa’s comments from the Ask Lisa Genova! group.

Hi Sara,

I'll be giving 7 different cities in Canada in October--check out where and when at www.lisagenova.com on the APPEARANCES page.

Thanks and Best,
Lisa

Salma wrote: "Dear Lisa,

I'm so honored to be writing to the author of my favorite book "Still Alice". I have one question for you please, I'm a Molecular Biology student -that's why i found the scientific inf..."

Hi Salma,

Read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, On Writing by Stephen King, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron to get started. I also recommend taking some acting classes--improv and Meisner if you can find them--the principles I learned in acting applied beautifully to writing.

Best wishes to you!
Lisa

Alena wrote: "Lisa, I think it's very generous of you to share your time with us. Thank you.
I picked up Still Alicefrom the Browser's Corner shelf at my libray and immediately noticed the inscrip..."

Hi Alena,

Alena is my daughter! So unusual too see someone else with the same spelling! :)

For STILL ALICE, I knew I would write about Alzheimer's in a woman because the story was inspired by my grandmother who had Alzheimer's in her 80's. I made her a Harvard professor because I wanted her life, her identity, her value to be placed almost entirely in what she did for a living, and I wanted that occupation to be intellectual. And I wanted this because when Alzheimer's then takes that cerebral job away from her, I wanted to explore questions like "who am I now?" and "how do I matter?" I wanted Alice to discover that she is more than what she can remember, that she has value beyond being able to remember her street address.

For LEFT NEGLECTED, I wanted to write about someone living a distracted life. The condition, Left Neglect, is an extreme form of inattention caused by brain injury--and I wanted this to be a metaphor for all the ways in our culture today that we're distracted everyday and call this normal. I wanted the main character to be driven to succeed in society's eyes, a big multi-tasker, trying to be it all, have it all, do it all. To my mind, the person stretched the thinnest, the person who feels compelled to do the most, who is burning the candle at both ends, is the working mom. And I wanted her to be a high-powered working mom because then she's even more distracted. I'm interested in big contrasts, big changes. In my acting training, we were told to always "raise the stakes as high as possible whenever possible" while always "keeping with the truth." I think I try to write like this as well.

Catherine wrote: "I loved "Still Alice." I actually was unaware of "Left Neglected" till I got an email from Goodreads about this group, but I plan to read it now. My son's father-in-law had a brain tumor 15 years..."

Hi Catherine,

Thanks for reading STILL ALICE! I hope you enjoy LEFT NEGLECTED.

Best wishes,
Lisa

Stacy wrote: "Hi Lisa,
Thank you so much for having this discussion group! I have read both Still Alice and Left Neglected and have enjoyed them immensely. Thank you for taking su..."

Hi Stacy,

LEFT NEGLECTED was written in the first person, which was a challenging choice once she got in her accident and was only aware of the right side of everything. But I thought it was a necessary choice because I wanted the reader to experience what Sarah felt with intimacy and immediacy, and I wanted you to experience her internal struggles and emotional journey firsthand. I'm sorry that this didn't seem to work for you. Both books were written with the intent of giving you the experience of these neurological conditions from the inside out.

Hi Everyone,

I'm still here. I apologize for not getting to all of your questions yet--it's been quite an exciting week here! My youngest turned 1 on Monday, I got called to be on CNN on Wednesday to talk about Pat Summitt and young onset Alzheimer's, and now I'm off to London on book tour.

I'll keep plugging away as I travel because I really do want to answer each and every question and comment. Thanks so much for taking the time to be here!

More soon!
Thanks,
Lisa

Ann wrote: "Happy Summer Lisa,
Hope you and the kids have been enjoying some down time. My question is this, in both Still Alice and Left Neglected you have the woman suffering through Alzheimers or brain inj..."

Hi Ann,

Thanks so much for your question. It felt natural to choose a woman rather than a man to have Alzheimer's in STILL ALICE because the book was inspired by my grandmother.

With LEFT NEGLECTED, I knew I was interested in finding a character who is living a distracted life, who is always multi-tasking and trying to do 5 things at once. It became obvious to me that the main character needed to be a working mother because she fits this description perfectly!

Janelle wrote: "Saw you this evening on CNN discussing Coach Summitt having ALZ. You did great in the interview! Hope all is well."

Thank you, Janelle! It was a great opportunity--I so admire and respect Pat Summitt for being so open and candid about her Alzheimer's. She'll help so many people dealing with this disease who are afraid to talk about it, who feel embarrassed or ashamed or alone.

Kathy wrote: "There's nothing more I enjoy in reading than discovering obscure, fascinating people, places, and events that rise above their seemingly non-relativity to my life and create in me a new awareness t..."

Thank you so much, Kathy!

Rosemary wrote: "Hi Lisa,
Left Neglected was a great read. I wonder if your upcoming books will feature Harvard University again. I notice both books noted Harvard. As a note of interest, my husband had a brain inj..."

Hi Rosemary,

Harvard doesn't make an appearance in my next book, LOVE ANTHONY, which takes place on Nantucket.

So wonderful to hear that your husband has recovered well. Neurosurgery is much less invasive now than it was 10 years ago, which helps with recovery, and therapists have more and more tools for rehabilitation, including things like software and computer "games." Scientist are also understanding more about how the brain can heal and recover after injury and also more about "neuroplasticity," how different parts of the brain can be activated to make new connections and take on new jobs. There is a lot of hope in this field!

Kathy wrote: "Lisa, a couple of us posted somewhere in these exchanges about our curiosity concerning Alzheimer's as a primary cause of death. I had always assumed that the primary cause was a physical ailment,..."

Hi Kathy,

Thanks so much for your post, your kinds words, and your question. Today, because we still don't have a cure, Alzheimer's never has a happy ending. People with AD, especially elderly people with AD, often die of some other ailment (stroke, heart attack, cancer) before they reach the final stage of Alzheimer's. But if you have Alzheimer's and live to the final stages, here's what typically happens--in addition to all the other things you've forgotten, you will forget how to swallow food (if you have children, remember that they had to learn how to do this, to not stick their tongue out at the spoon). You'll accidentally aspirate some food into your lungs, you'll develop pneumonia, and this will be the cause of death.

Hi Sheri,

Thanks for your questions. I needed Sarah to have a high-powered, many-houred job. Strategy consultants (I'm familiar with these folks, as I was once one of them) fit this bill, but they travel much more than I wanted for Sarah. I have two friends who are Directors of Human Resources, and they work a TON of hours. So that worked. And I liked the idea of Human Resources--evaluating what is valuable and resourceful in people. This is exactly what Sarah will be tasked to do with herself.

I had 2 kids while I was writing LEFT NEGLECTED but I've since caught up to Sarah (I delivered a book and a baby last year!). I wanted Sarah's life and her attention to be stretched too thin. I wanted her to be always distracted. Two kids feels manageable to me (one in each hand), but I always suspected that three would be chaos. I wanted Sarah to have chaos. And now having three myself, I can say that my suspicion was right. Controlled chaos, cute chaos, but chaos!

Sally wrote: "Hi Lisa, I just finished Just Alice, saw in the back that you wrote Left Neglected and found this discussion, all in a week!

I want to thank you. I'm helping take care of my best friend who has s..."

Hi Sally, Thank you for posting this. I can't tell you how rewarding this is to hear, to know that STILL ALICE is having such a positive impact on people who are going through something so difficult. Best wishes to you and your best friend.

You might also like going through some of my old blog entries (www.lisagenova.com)--I posted a lot of stories about living with Alzheimer's and include interviews with people who have it. These might help as well.

Susan wrote: "Hi, I read Still Alice, and loved it and posted my thoughts on my blog if you are interested, at http://susansliterarycafe.blogspot.com. I also enjoyed reading Left Neglected, and was a lucky reade..."

Hi Susan,

Thanks so much for your kind comments and for you blog review! Great to see you here! Yes, I'm writing the next book, LOVE ANTHONY, today. I'm on chapter 7--looking forward to school starting, getting my oldest back in school, getting back into the routine.

Bailey (The Window Seat Reader) wrote: "Lisa - I loved Still Alice and look forward to reading Left Neglected soon. I saw on your facebook page that you received many rejection letters in the past. What was that like, and how did you ..."

Hi Bailey,

Yes, I received A LOT of rejection responses for STILL ALICE. I sent out 100 query letters to literary agents back in 2006. I'm still waiting to hear back from some! I mostly heard, "Dear Author, No thank you." Funny, I thought I'd thrown out all of those rejection letters years ago (it was a BIG pile, at least 50), but just the other day when I was cleaning out my desk, I found a folder with 19 more rejections. I snapped a photo and posted it to www.facebook.com/authorlisagenova.

Four literary agents wanted to read the manuscript--one I still haven't heard back from, two thought Alzheimer's was too depressing a subject/no one will want to read about this, and the last thought, given my scientific background, that I should write non-fiction instead.

So after about a year of this and with no other real option other than sticking STILL ALICE in a drawer and doing something else, I self-published it. This was July 2007. I paid $450 to iUniverse and began selling the self-published edition of STILL ALICE out of the trunk of my car. I did this for 10 months before I signed with an agent--who then quickly sold it to Simon & Schuster. It's been quite a crazy ride!!

Russell wrote: "Lisa,
Illness is becoming more common as an important element of contemporary literature, Still Alice and Left Neglected being among them. The arts are the only place where certain important issues..."

Hi Russell,

Thanks so much for this great comment and question. I think fiction is powerful place to explore conditions like Alzheimer's, traumatic brain injury, autism. And here's why. If I wrote a non-fiction book about Alzheimer's (instead of STILL ALICE), then that book would mostly be read by only the Alzheimer's community (caregivers, doctors, people with dementia). But if I explore what it feels like to experience Alzheimer's, and I instead put that information in a fictional narrative, then we have a book that will be read by people BEYOND the Alzheimer's community. If it's a novel, then it has the chance to reach, move, enlighten, inform people who might otherwise not know anything about Alzheimer's. Likewise with Left Neglect and autism. If I don't have a son with autism, I'm probably not going to seek out a self-help or nonfiction book about this topic. But I might read a novel about a boy with autism, and then, while I'm hopefully being entertained by a compelling story, I'll also have the chance to gain a sensitivity and better understanding of people who are living with autism.

Hi Christen,

I think you need a passionate curiosity but not a prior knowledge. I actually knew very little about Alzheimer's and almost nothing about Neglect before I began the research for each book. But I WANTED to understand these conditions as much as possible, and fortunately for me, my background gave me the credibility I needed to walk through all the doors I knocked on.

A great example for you is Geraldine Brooks. I recently heard her speak at the Martha's Vineyard Book Festival, and she was talking about her most recent book, CALEB'S CROSSING. It's about the first Native American to go to Harvard in the 1600's (!). She didn't know anything about this subject prior to writing this book; she wasn't an expert on Harvard history or Native American history. But she loves history, and she was captivated by this man's story. She described her process as following the threads of fact and truth as far as you can, and then leaping off into fiction from there.

Hi Karen,

Funny you should ask this question because I actually got to do this. STILL ALICE was originally self-published before Simon & Schuster bought it. In the self-published edition, the book ends with John in the coffee shop. Before I signed with my literary agent, she asked me to write a new ending. I wrote what is now the epilogue, and I love it. I'm so grateful she asked me to do this, and the book got this sort of second chance at having the right ending.

Hi Christen,

My grandmother had Alzheimer's, and my experience watching her symptoms and the progression of her illness was the seed for STILL ALICE. While I was writing the book, I was online (email and chat) every day for over a year and a half with people who are living with Alzheimer's or a related dementia. My conversations with them were such an incredible gift--they opened themselves to me and showed me what it feels like to live with Alzheimer's. I listened and learned, and they helped inform the reality behind Alice's fictional journey. In terms of Alice's decision--the disease, and her forgetting, made the decision for her. This became where the story needed to go, and I'm glad it took Alice there.

Heather wrote: "I read Still Alice when it first came out and was blown away by the book. Your writing is the kind of writing that makes me feel like I should give up the dream of writing.Still Alice was an amazin..."

Hi Heather, Cindy, and Sandy,

Wow, thanks so much! In terms of character development--I begin with a lot of research, and the best research is always outside of the textbooks, talking to real people who live with Alzheimer's or Left Neglect. I also use a lot of the tools I learned when I studied acting--you're always telling the truth under imaginary circumstances, raise the stakes as high as possible whenever possible, what do people want from each other, what happens if they don't get it, how are people changed by what happens. Read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Heather, keep writing! Best wishes!