Ask the Author: Daniel Lowe
Answered Questions (11)
Daniel Lowe
This is less a plot than a theme: each of my children is beautiful and thoughtful and interesting, but each in such significantly different ways. I find their differences and distances from one another a bottomless source of fascination, and plumbing the depths of the origins of them remains a wonder.
Daniel Lowe
Of course! I'm glad you enjoyed the article, and please feel free to ask any question about the book.
Daniel Lowe
That's often a complex question to answer, as the roots of your own narratives are sometimes challenging to trace. The simplest response is that, like many of us, I was paying attention to events in the Middle East (though I started writing the novel before the rise of ISIS), horrified by some of what I saw as a result of terror attacks and retaliatory drone strikes, while at the same time my eldest daughter was going away to college. Somehow these international and personal circumstances stirred in my head, and I was intrigued by the prospect of writing a novel about an American man who was kidnapped in Pakistan just after his daughter had been murdered back home. And I wondered further how he might remember his daughter's life if he was blindfolded while his interlocutor interrogated him. The novel spun forward from these early ideas.
Daniel Lowe
Wow. That's a great question, and a tough one. It's hard to ignore all of the classic couples--Vronsky and Anna Karenina, Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley in " A Farewell to Arms," even Humbert Humbert and Lolita. But I'm going to choose a couple from a more recent book, Cecelia Tallis and Robbie Turner from Ian McEwan's "Atonement." That their love is largely unrequited is part of the appeal, and the journey each character takes on his or her own is another. But I also admire McEwan's use of story to create a history for this couple that makes reality more tolerable for Cecelia's sister, Brittany. I'll say no more than that for those who have yet to read the book.
Daniel Lowe
Hi Pam,
I'd be happy to do an interview with you. Give me a sense of what you're looking for, or what the purpose of the interview may be. And please feel free to email me, if you'd like, at danlowe@danieljaylowe.com if you have questions or other comments. Thanks so much for the contact!
Dan Lowe
I'd be happy to do an interview with you. Give me a sense of what you're looking for, or what the purpose of the interview may be. And please feel free to email me, if you'd like, at danlowe@danieljaylowe.com if you have questions or other comments. Thanks so much for the contact!
Dan Lowe
Daniel Lowe
Dedicate yourself to the craft of writing; dedicate yourself to the work of writing. Find an hour or two five days a week to work, and promise yourself you won't stop working until you've written 500 words. You'll be amazed at what accumulates over time. We all worry about publishing, but I didn't publish my first novel until I was 58, and I'd written a number of manuscripts prior to that. Stay interested in the craft, and this will carry you through disappointment and rejection.
Daniel Lowe
I don't let myself get up from the writer's chair until i've written 500 words (usually). They may not be great words, or even good ones, but the only way to break through writer's block is to set script to screen, pen to paper. Mostly, ideas about the work we might do don't emerge when we aren't practicing the craft. There may be a number of lights that guide my writing life, but often the only one that leads to production is the lantern of written language that shines when I'm working.
Daniel Lowe
The astonishment, upon reflection, at the shape and content of the sentences, paragraphs, and pages you've written that you could never have imagined having created when you are going about the daily business of your life. The writing process is transformative, but not so often in the moment as upon reflection.
Daniel Lowe
I've nearly completed a new manuscript that I'll send to my agent soon. It's a novel (as many are) about memory, a woman visiting a long ago lover who is confined to his bed, a murder, and a fourteen-year-old boy's relationship with his sister and a man who is teaching him to draw. (Plot summaries aren't easy to write!)
Daniel Lowe
When I was younger, I waited for inspiration, but that can strike anywhere and anytime, and it can be difficult to find a place to write when inspiration hits. Worse, what might seem an inspiring moment often doesn't translate when the writer finally sits down. I believe in dedication to the craft more than inspiration. The practice of writing leads to epiphanic moments while a writer is at the computer and away from it. But it's the practice that makes for inspiration.
Daniel Lowe
It's always difficult to know from where an idea rises. In "All That's Left to Tell," the book's premise rose from my daughter leaving for college and the spike (at that time) in kidnappings in the Middle East. But that would not be readily apparent to anyone who reads the book.
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