Ask the Author: L.E. Daniels
Answered Questions (6)
L.E. Daniels
Hi Debra,
Thanks for asking and funny you should ask. On the very same day you posted this, the publisher emailed and asked me if I wanted to record one and I'm thinking about it. I just need to find the time...!
~Lauren
Thanks for asking and funny you should ask. On the very same day you posted this, the publisher emailed and asked me if I wanted to record one and I'm thinking about it. I just need to find the time...!
~Lauren
L.E. Daniels
I think I start with an entanglement of meaning and gratitude. My strongest essays, like 'Maternal Lines', started with what the ghosts of our collective past may be trying to tell me about the present. As I try to make meaning, I inevitably fall into a great sense of relief to be where and when I am in this world, even with all the strife. We have so much at our fingertips today. Once good books were burned and the voices of women were silenced, now we have all this space. How can we not use it?
L.E. Daniels
'Serpent's Wake' started with a '89 course called The Psychology of Religion at Fairfield University in Connecticut, when I was still a psych major. The professor cited how Marie von Franz revolutionized our perspectives on fairy tales as a microcosm of our most primal struggles. Clarissa Pinkola Estes' 'Women Who Run with the Wolves' further expanded my thinking and Judith Herman's 'Trauma and Recovery' conveyed the universality of our experiences, from veterans to children.
In essence, I wrote the story I most wanted to read: one that integrates the milestones of trauma and recovery into a tangible allegory. The events are familiar to those of us who know them, and my hope was that readers experience a sense of communion in a place where we so often feel alone.
In essence, I wrote the story I most wanted to read: one that integrates the milestones of trauma and recovery into a tangible allegory. The events are familiar to those of us who know them, and my hope was that readers experience a sense of communion in a place where we so often feel alone.
L.E. Daniels
Read widely. Get several good mentors and surround yourself with people who believe in you. Study voraciously. Writers need nurturing, support and couple of friends who understand that this is a lifelong vocation.
L.E. Daniels
Rilke wrote 'love the questions' and I create a space where I can do that. For 'Serpent's Wake', the question was 'How do we call all our fragments back together again when we've been broken? What would that look like as a contemporary fairy tale?' The best part of writing 'Serpent's Wake' was loving that question and every single one of my characters, even the scoundrels, into being. I am probably happiest when I'm waist-deep in my story.
L.E. Daniels
Isn't writer's block just something we have to push through? For me, to be blocked is just a lock-down of fear. A voiceless deep-freeze. I have to hit that kind of thing head on, like a moose through a snowbank. I trumpet and yell my way through with write/delete/write/delete/write until something comes. Something eventually does.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more