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Lauren Baratz-Logsted
I recently reviewed Lauren Baratz-Logsted's book Vertigo on my blog Bluestalking Reader. She graciously accepted my request for an interview, to accompany the review. I've reprinted the interview below:
LG: When did you know you wanted to be a writer? What inspired you?
LBL: I was in eighth grade, twelve years old. My English teacher gave us an assignment to write a short story featuring three seemingly disparate elements: a priest, a nurse and a camel. I stranded them on a desert aisle and had the priest experience a crisis of conscience as he fell in love with the nurse. As the camel who had been injured was airlifted to safety, the priest renounced his vows and he and the nurse clinched on the beach, ala The Thorn Birds, which I had not read yet. My teacher had me read the story to the class three days running. It made me feel self-conscious, and I'm sure they all hated me a little by the third reading, but it also made me realize, for the first time in my life, that I had stories to tell and some people just might want to hear them.
LG: How do you balance writing and the rest of your life? Is it difficult fitting in time to write?
No, but that's because I'm crazy. When I first started writing, I used to get up between 2:30 and 4:30 in the morning to make sure I got in my writing quota for the day. Now my schedule is much more civilized. I rise between 5:00 and 6:00 and work most of the hours my daughter is in school. When I'm working on a novel, I try to work seven days a week, but that's not always possible. It does help, in terms of the hours I get to work, that I only clean if people are coming over and that I am devoted to frozen foods.
LG: What contemporary writers do you admire? Are there any you feel have influenced your own work?
LBL: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sena Jeter Naslund, Margaret George are a few, although I find it easier, if we're talking about contemporary writers, to talk about specific books I've admired lately. Some of those would be: A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon; The Pale Blue Eye, Louis Bayard; This Human Season, Louise Dean; The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards. In terms of influences, I write in so many genres and voices, I can't really think of anyone who's influenced my work. I guess for the comedies, I'd have to say Nick Hornby. But for a book like Vertigo? It's really more the result of an entire lifetime reading and loving British literature and watching episodes of "Masterpiece Theatre" than anything else.
LG: Do you have a method for developing characters?
LBL: Not really. I typically start a book with a title, an idea and a character. The main character's distinctive voice, as well as those surrounding him or her, all grow outward from there. And I like to leave room for the characters to surprise me. For example, in Vertigo, I knew from the start that some of the characters weren't very nice people but I didn't always know quite how bad they would get!
LG: In 'Vertigo' Emma's husband is a writer. In the passages in which you write about his thoughts on his craft, how much of that is your own experience?
LBL: Well, I hope to never be as pompous as John Smith, who is prone more to making pronouncements than actual conversation, but yes, his ideas on writing - when he talks about the difference between writing comedy and drama, or when he discusses what I think of as "the dartboard method" of writing a novel - are shared by me.
LG: How much reseach went into the writing of 'Vertigo'? Did you read Victorian novels to get background?
LBL: From the time I was 10, I've averaged 100-250 books a year, and even more the last two years since on New Year's Eve 2004 I vowed to read a book a day the following year and now I can't seem to stop. This is all to say that I'd already read a ton of Victorian fiction before the idea of writing Vertigo ever even entered my head. That said, once I decided to write the book, I did read an enormous amount of nonfiction on the time period so I would get the little details right: plenty of books on Victorian design, both interior and exterior, and five - count them, five - books on the British penal system.
LG: What's next for you? Are you working on another book?
LBL: I'm crazy - see earlier answer in reference to question 2 - so I'm always working on something. Right now most of those efforts are aimed at the Young Adult market or younger - for example, my seven-year-old daughter, my husband and I are jointly developing a series about octuplets for younger readers, which I hope will sell - while I wait to hear from the publisher of Vertigo whether they like the opening pages I submitted for a new project: a novel called The Chocolate Prince that opens in 1873 and features identical twins who will grow up to fall in love with the same girl; one brother is forever jealous of the other, the other brother is forever jealous of his archrival, Milton Hershey, and the book has two framing devices - one involving the history of chocolate since the 7th century and the other is two women in bed, one of whom is telling the other the story the reader is reading. Fingers crossed!
LG:. As a public library employee I'm compelled to ask, what role have libraries played in your love of books and writing?
LBL: My mother, who is now 84, is a library hound, always has been, and some of my best memories from childhood are going to the library to get books. I used to love the ka-thunk sound the library cards made when put into the due-back dating machine and well remember when my hometown library was just a one-room affair. In fact, I love libraries so much, I worked in one for several years as a sort-of librarian, arranging events and leading book discussions and writing workshops, and also wrote a comedic novel about a librarian: A Little Change of Face, wherein gorgeous librarian Scarlett Jane Stein deliberately alters her looks for the worse in order to find out what life is like once she's no longer a swan. Very different from Vertigo!
Thank you to Lauren Baratz-Logsted for taking the time to answer my interview questions.
Latest page update: made by TemlynWriting
, Mar 21 2007, 3:39 PM EDT
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Naming the author who's being interviewed.
- TemlynWriting
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- complete history)
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