Ann Duddy asked Alice Sherman Simpson:

I'm about halfway through Ballroom, thanks to the Goodreads giveaway! What made you decide to write this in present tense?

Alice Sherman Simpson Ann asks: Why did I write Ballroom in Present Tense?

I will let you in on a secret, Ann. My grasp of grammar and punctuation and the correct way to use tenses began and ended at P.S. 32. I just can’t seem to grasp where commas belong. It was quite embarrassing for me, when my first edit came back from Harper—my tenses and ubiquitous commas had run amuck. But these savvy editors were very reassuring and reminded me with every apology I made that that is what editors are for.

They were also quick to recognize that as I wrote and developed BALLROOM, I had shuffled scenes around—moving some from the present to the past and vice versa—from general back-story to specific flashback scenes. The tenses in quite a few scenes were inconsistent and therefore might be unclear to the reader. Writing in present tense made some chapters more immediate. By writing in present tense, I was able to shift into the simple past when a flashback began and then return to the present when it was finished.

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