Ask the Author: Nancy Shattuck
Answered Questions (11)
Nancy Shattuck
Window curtains slipping across the sill told her it was open a second before she gasped for air. The hands on her throat cut it off as suddenly.
Nancy Shattuck
I would live in the forest lands of the movie The Avatar.
Nancy Shattuck
Suzanne, The Midwife is the story of a woman who lives in a very dangerous frontier town in Massachusetts. I had to invent a woman who would fit into the environment and the events that actually occurred in her time. I wanted her to be an independent woman who would not be afraid to establish contact with the Indian tribe across the river. Also, she had to have an occupation that would being her together with that tribe frequently. Healing occupations, I thought, as in our own times -- I think of doctors without borders -- would suffice to build a fiction that held a great deal of tension and suspense.
Nancy Shattuck
The most inspiring book I have ever read is The War of Art. It set me on fire!
Nancy Shattuck
I am currently working on a historical novel series. I have completed three books and am simultaneously writing the fourth and fifth books because the characters are intertwined.
Nancy Shattuck
The most obvious is to read as much as possible and try to write like the ones you like best. Then, throw out the experiments and write from memory.
Nancy Shattuck
Problem solving. As I write, I come across a challenge a minute. How do I express this complex emotion? what did a 17th century hog pen look like? Did it smell? What would she do if he did that? Writing is like being at the reins for a carriage with six horses.
Nancy Shattuck
I rarely find writer's block a problem if only because I know that putting any words on paper, wrestling them down from the ether, will inevitably begin to gel into a coherent bit of prose or poetry. The wilder the better the incoherent words.
Nancy Shattuck
Kathleen, I am basing a purely fictional family, The Sherborn family, on my ancestors. I am not writing their history but merely painting a fictional picture of a family who lived at the same time.
Nancy Shattuck
I am answering this two years after the fact. This summer, though, I want to finish a book I started in January: The Ninth Street Women. Also, I plan to tackle a book that will probably keep me until the end of the year: the dense prose of Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, a historical novel.
Nancy Shattuck
Coming of age in my twenties.
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