Leah’s Comments (group member since Apr 07, 2010)

Leah’s comments from the Q&A with Leah Stewart group.

I'm doing a BOGO giveaway this week. Details are on my FB fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Leah-St...

Jenny wrote: "Sarah has abandoned writing for her kids. Do you struggle with the balance for yourself? How do you manage it? I felt heartbroken for her in that regard. It was like she had let go of so much o..."

I do struggle with it, though there was only one year, the first after my daughter was born, that I set writing aside completely. I manage it by negotiating time with my husband, getting childcare, and making sure I make time every day both for writing and for the children. The hardest days are the ones when I have to stop writing to take over childcare, but what I've been working on is still on my mind. I'd like to keep thinking, but small children don't have much tolerance for that.

Sha18 wrote: "I loved the "Myth of you and me". This book truely defined the meaning of friendship. I look forward to reading your latest book."

Thank you!

Serge wrote: "I have not red the book .It seems very interesting ,where could i obtain it please?"

Here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Husband-Wife-No...

Cindy wrote: "When did you first start writing? And how did you turn that writing into writing novels?
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who want to be authors?"

I started writing as a kid--mostly bad poems and imitations of my favorite fantasy novels. I don't know that I ever completed a story until college workshops required me to. After graduate school, I set about trying to write a novel and taught myself how to do it as I went along. My best advice is to make writing part of your routine, whether it's daily or twice-weekly or whatever works for you. Otherwise it's easy to let it fall by the wayside when there are so many other pressing things to take care of. Also, read, read, read, and look for models of the kind of book you want to write.

Elizabeth wrote: "You include many things in your novel that are reminiscent of your own life. How autobiographical is this novel?"

The kids are based on my kids, at the ages they were when I started the book. The house where Nathan and Sarah live is essentially the house where we used to live in North Carolina. And then, of course, some of the ideas Sarah expresses about art, motherhood, marriage, etc., are things I'd been thinking about. I've been getting asked a lot if the infidelity part is based on my own life, which it isn't, and Nathan is not a portrait of my husband, though my husband is also a fiction writer.

I get the autobiographical question enough that I wonder a couple of things maybe some of you can answer: Do you think people want to hear that a novel IS based in truth? And do you think the interest in autobiographical elements is greater when the writer is a woman? (Just read an article in the NYT about Emily Dickinson and the ongoing speculation about her love life.)

Loubna wrote: "hi leah , i'm from morocco and i want to know why we are excludes to get books from questia or from authors.the books are available only for eople from us, canada,and GB.
thank you for your consid..."

I wish I could help. I assume it has something to do with foreign rights?

Loubna wrote: "hi leah, i'm so excited to read your book since i'm a new memmber.i havent't read "husband and wife " yet , but i'm sure i will like it."

Thanks, Loubna. I hope you do!

Mary wrote: "Hi Leah, I read Husband and Wife (thanks to the Goodreads first reads program) last week and really liked it. I don't belong to a book group but this book had me wishing I did. I think it would b..."

Thanks, Mary! I'm really glad your feelings about Nathan changed. I worried about that. I wanted to read his version, too, which is one reason I included the little story he writes at the end.

Proof, courtesy of one of my students, that men read my last book!

http://twitpic.com/1ljtia

Diane wrote: "Hi Leah,

Thanks for taking questions! I'm wondering about your writing process. Where do you get your ideas? Once you get an idea, do you start with a plot outline and if so how close do you stick..."

Like most writers, I notice a number of details in the world that suggest a good story, but some of them stick in my mind and some don't. Broadly speaking I get my ideas from what I observe in the lives of people around me, but not everything that's interesting leads to a story it would suit me to write. I'm interested in intense emotional experiences, and also in questions of identity, so I keep thinking about the things that press those buttons, and if I keep thinking about something enough I'll realize it's subject matter for a novel. I've tried with only one (still unfinished) book to write a plot outline before I began, and that was a bust. I suppose I need more of a feeling of discovery to keep going. So usually I just start, and I go until I get stuck, and then I try to figure out where I am and where I'm going. At that point I'll often do a plot outline, but it's pretty open. I'll know big turning points in the story, but I don't plan it scene by scene.

Kyle wrote: "Hi Leah,

Did you set out to write a book about infidelity? Or did it start with creating the main character and the story came from her?"

It's already a little hard to remember, but I think they came together. When I started writing Sarah's voice, she was talking about the scene that opens the book, when her husband confesses his infidelity. And I knew from the beginning that she'd be someone who'd once identified as an artist and wasn't so sure she did anymore, and that for her his infidelity would have to do with that shift in her identity, a shift brought about in large part by motherhood.

This might be hard to believe, if you've already read the first chapter, but she actually sounded a lot angrier at first. And the first two pages, in which she talks more generally about her life, were something I added later. But the first scene--he confesses as they're about to leave for a wedding--is essentially the same.

I did have a close friendship end over a man. I'm sure writing the book helped me lay to rest any lingering feelings about that, but when I think about it now what seems most therapeutic is the fact that writing the book made me remember and consider a number of close friendships, some with people I no longer see. (Though thanks to Facebook, I'm back in touch with many of them.) I like the idea expressed in the book that these relationships matter and persist, even years after you spoke to the person.

I heard many, many stories about other friendships, but I only remember the most dramatic ones, like the woman who found her high school best friend in bed with her father, and the woman who lost her best friend when she was killed in Iraq. Hearing other women's stories definitely affirmed my own feeling that these intense friendships are a crucial part of growing up.

I think plenty of people, myself included, have close friendships as adults, but it's hard for them to be as intense, because most of us have neither the time nor the super-dramatic emotions of youth.

Jennifer, I was just asked at my first reading for Husband and Wife whether men would like the book. I mean, really, there's no way for me to know, but it's continually amazing to me how automatically people assume that they wouldn't. Also men are not a homogenous group, any more than women. Some women, me for instance, would like a manly man book like my friend Elwood Reid's novel D.B. Some wouldn't.

For questions about my new book, out May 4.

For questions about my second book.

Actually, most of the readers who wrote to me about liking this book were men. I don't really think of any of my books as targeted to one gender or the other. People do tend to assume that books by and about women are only interesting to women, which I find rather frustrating. My second book is about friendship between women, so people assume it's only for women, but high school kids of both genders have been reading A SEPARATE PEACE, about friendship between men, for years.

Thanks for joining me on Goodreads! Looking forward to your questions.