How long does it take you to write a book?

A long time.  I got the idea for a tiny portion of Swimming Sweet Arrow in my first fiction class in college in the fall of 1981.  I worked on it when I was in graduate school at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1987-89, but I didn't complete the first (bad) draft of it until 1995.  I revised it until it came into its final form, and it was published in 2000.  So almost twenty years!  My new novel, Thief, went a little quicker:  I began working on it in the fall of 2000, and it's coming out in the spring of 2010.

How much of your fiction is based on reality?

I frequently draw from real life experiences, but I'm also a terrific liar.  But even in my current project, a novel set in 19th century Paris, I'm still drawing upon reality — not only the reality of the century that I've been able to read about, but upon my own experiences as well.  In Paul Theroux's latest book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, he quotes the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar as saying, "'Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism.'"

Your writing is often described as "graphic."  Why is that?

I try to write about work with half the eloquence real people have when they describe what they do, day in and day out.  I believe sex is a life force and I try to write about it as straightforwardly as I can.  I try to let characters live within their desires and addictions, because most people are works in progress.  I let characters say what they want and need to say.

Do you write every day?

I do not write every day.  I admire people who write every day, and everything I know about the discipline of writing daily makes absolute sense to me. I just can’t do it — or rather, I don’t do it. Sometimes long periods of time pass when I don’t write anything. During those times, I’m often actively thinking about writing or mulling ideas over in my mind. During other periods, writing is the last thing on my mind. I would say that I feel happiest when I think about writing daily. I often keep my characters in mind as I’m falling asleep, and I think about them as I’m driving.

I don’t mean that I just sit around waiting to write until I’m inspired. But thinking about my work when I can’t do more is my way of staying in touch with it. Sometimes, if I can’t manage to do anything else, I just carry around typed pages, or the little notebook where I have all my notes and artifacts. I slip those things into my purse or bag, and carry them with me through the day and out into the world.

What is that little house in the pictures at the bottom of some of your web pages?

My writing studio.  It's on the edge of a meadow and at the edge of the woods, and its apparently on a well-worn animal path, because all sorts of critters go by:  white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, black bears, and one bobcat in the spring of 2009.  At least that's who I've seen walking by.  The place is made of some new and some recycled materials.  I got the front door free at the dump.

What about the orange flowers on the top of your website?

Those are my Mandarin Lights azaleas.

So you garden?

I stick things in the ground.  Most of them die from a combination of poor soil, my own laziness, and Zone 3 winters.  But the Mandarin Lights have survived, and so have some Festiva Maxima peonies (below left). Mostly I'm content to look at wildflowers, which are both beautiful and hardy, like prairie smoke.  Prairie smoke flowers look like fairy heads. 


Goldenrod crab spider on one of my peonies.      Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) by the studio.

What's your favorite movie pairing? 

Ok, no one asked me this, but I'm going to talk about it anyway.  One night my husband and I were watching TV late on a Saturday, and we caught Bruce Lee's Return of the Dragon.  The next night we happened upon Roman Holiday.  It was sort of brilliant to see those two films together that had nothing in common with each other, but which were both set in Rome and somehow showed up on the TV in quick succession.  And I happen to love both movies.

How can I get in touch with you?

To contact me using Outlook Express or other email programs, click HERE.

Or, write to:  queries "at" maureengibbon.com