Rose asked Maggie Shipstead:

Who was the hardest character to write? Is it easier or harder to write for a character you relate to?

Maggie Shipstead Actually, Joan was the most difficult character for me. She's a person who, in life, wouldn't necessarily have the strongest personality even though she has had what I think is an interesting life and a set of experiences via her dancing that would be really alien to most people. But she's a reserved person, a stubborn person, a person who's life is more physical than cerebral, and that was challenging to get on the page. A frequent note I got was, "I'd like to know more about Joan." I had the easiest time with Arslan and Elaine.

I think generally I have a slightly harder time writing female characters than male. (Make of that what you will.) I seldom relate very strongly to any one character. I find if my fiction gets too close to home, autobiographically speaking, I write stuff that's boring and self-serving. In Astonish Me, though, I did feel like I was exploring some of the challenges of writing by digging into the challenges of dance. The two art forms are so different--solitary v. collaborative, sedentary v. physical, etc.--but some of the questions that the dancers in the book have to grapple with are questions I think about sometimes. For example: how do you make peace with your own limitations? How do you make room for life when your work demands huge amounts of time and energy? These aren't questions exclusively for artists, either. Most people have them.

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