It All Depends on How You Feel About Being Alive

Hi friends.

I’ve been moving for days, and every part of me aches, but the new house is good, and quiet, and cozy already. All the time I think, “I’ll be safe here,”

The writing has disappeared for the moment, but not entirely. When you write about a particular place, and the people of it—as I am doing in part with this new book—and you are moving through that place, the book is always speaking to you even when you are not expecting it. As it did a few nights ago.

One of the characters in my new novel was an art teacher here in New Orleans for a number of years. In the present day of the book it is merely a detail she mentions, as it is not what she is doing with her life anymore—she has a brand-new career. I only knew in my gut that was her backstory, and while it was not irrelevant, it was also not something I was necessarily inclined or insired to explore because I was so focused on the present.

I really love this character; she is special to me. She is complicated and direct, and I learn a little bit every time I write her. But I was thinking merely of the now, when it came to her. Perhaps it was a blind spot for me.

Then I heard about a real-life version of this character, and it stopped me in my tracks.