Le asked Lisa See:

R U FROM HERE OR OVER SEAS? hOW DID U COME TO BE A AUTHOR.

Lisa See To answer your first question, I was born in Paris but grew up in Los Angeles. To answer your second question, I didn’t want to be an author initially. My mom’s a writer and my mother’s father was a writer. I wanted to do something different. But then I became a writer! I feel like I’ve been in a lifelong apprenticeship. I learned a lot about writing from my mother that most people take years and years to learn or may never learn. Writing was literally in my blood. I always say it was a good thing they weren’t plumbers. But after years of resistance, I woke up one day, and it was like a light bulb went off. I mean it was just like, “Oh, I could be a writer…” At the time, I was living in Greece, and I didn’t want to get married, and didn’t want to have children, and I only wanted to live out of a suitcase, and I thought, how can I do that? I’ll be a writer!” It really had to do with how can I have real freedom with my time? My goal was how can I have a life where my time is my own? Where I don’t have to be in an office, where I could travel, where I could choose my own hours? I was really trying to find what that could be because it was really important to me, and it still is. Especially when my sons were younger, I could work from home. When they had the Halloween special thing at school, I wouldn’t have to miss it. And that was just very important to me.

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