Q: It takes some finesse to get in specific historical details without it seeming like a history lesson, and also subtlety, in terms of how you convey information about how who's related to whom.Ī: I don't think about that when I'm writing. She just said, "This is not a Russian novel! Trust your readers. Just keep reading and I promise you it will all come together." At one point, I wanted to put a chart (of characters) in the book, and my editor laughed at me. You don't need to keep flipping back and wondering who is who. Sometimes when I meet people, I say to them, "Don't worry about all that's happening in part one. I write like 20 drafts, literally, and I really struggled with getting part one right. When I looked back at all, I realized that the rest of the book was so, so much better than part one. Then I came back and wrote a first draft of the rest of the book. How did you balance all these interweaving storylines?Ī: I wrote the first draft of part one, but then I had to stop for two years to make the movie of "Tiger Eyes" (her 1981 young-adult novel). Q: Someone described the number of characters in this book as rivaling Tolstoy. I didn't have to research things like angora sweaters and who was singing what, and what we were wearing, and the lipstick. I think that for me the details of the time were just part of my life, they were inside of me.
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