Ask the Author: Diane Thomas
Answered Questions (10)
Diane Thomas
Cassandra -- We made it. We're just about unpacked in Boulder, CO. Thanks for good wishes. Hope you enjoy(ed) In Wilderness.
Diane Thomas
I hope the Goodreads folks have by now sent you a copy of IN WILDERNESS. If not, please let me know. If I'm slow to respond, it's because we're moving to another state this weekend and my life is in temporary chaos until we get there and get unpacked.
Diane Thomas
Hello Cassandra -- I am very sorry this has happened. I will contact Goodreads on your behalf. I don't know how the giveaways are handled. We've done several Goodreads Giveaways and yours is the first such complaint I've heard of. I will follow up. -- Diane
Diane Thomas
Hi Sheila -- Sorry so long answering. I'm just learning there are all these ways to communicate on Goodreads. I remember the north Georgia mountains in the early 1970s, before all the resort/retirement communities were built there. And I lived for seven years in one of those communities near Jasper, in NW Georgia near Amicalola Falls. Also, during that time I often visited the area around Clarkesville, in NE Georgia not far from Unicoi. So I guess the setting was a combination of both those areas. I just love it up there. Thanks for asking, got me to thinking about them again. And I'm so glad you liked the book. Thanks. -- Diane
Diane Thomas
I Velcro my butt to my computer chair, turn on my computer and start typing. I stay there a long time.
Diane Thomas
My third novel. enough said.
Diane Thomas
Write. Read. Read good books. Read the kind of books you want to write. Read good books about how to write. Keep a journal. Get a creative writing MFA if you're so inclined and you've got the money. Befriend other writers. Join a writers critique group. Go to writers conferences. Become a careful observer of what's going on around you; make it second nature to describe this in your head. Be a people watcher. Write and write and write.
Diane Thomas
You don't have to dress for it, you get to read to people, you can find out how you really feel about things. Hard to pick one.
Diane Thomas
I ask myself, am I too busy to write? Is there something else I need to write first on the book before I write what I'm blocking? Am I dissatisfied with what I'm working on? Invariably, tending to one f these clears it up. Snacking helps, too.
Diane Thomas
When I wrote the first draft of IN WILDERNESS, nearly 35 years ago, I was very ill and feared I was dying. I wrote it to distract myself from my fears. I deeply wanted to be in the mountains a couple hours north of Atlanta but was too weak to go. I created a woman my own age, sent her into that mountain wilderness to die or heal. When I rewrote the early manuscript, in 2009, and it became IN WILDERNESS, I'd moved to New Mexico and was blindsided by homesickness for those same gentle southern mountains and again I couldn't get there. So I wrote the novel as a way to get there without being there.
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