Long before I moved to Savannah which is just a hop and skip down the road from Dorothea’s ‘low country’ I was reading her extraordinary stories of women in the south. This author draws you in, seduces you with her heroines’ triumphs and challenges that any woman can relate to. That’s why I was particularly pleased and honored when she granted me this interview.
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.
A. I write in my office in my home in NJ or in my office in my home in SC. My dream work space would be to occupy my little office in SC full time. This cruelty of this past winter’s plummeting temps, deep snow and black ice has cured me of any desire I may have had to remain in NJ. It’s not that I have anything against NJ. I have had many wonderful years here. It’s that I’m trapped indoors for months. But check back with me in a few years when I finally do reside in SC and hurricanes have me screaming for higher ground. Is anyone ever completely happy?
Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
A. Water. Solitude. My work space is neat and tidy in chapter one. By the end of a book it looks like 
someone dropped a bomb on my desk. Usually I dress for work the same way you would if you reported for work in a very casual corporate environment.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
A. The nuns who taught me in high school told my parents I wasn’t “college material.” Nice, right? In 1970, parents believed teachers, especially clergy, as though their words were spoken Ex Cathedra.
Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?
A. I begin at ten and continue until late in the afternoon. If I wrote only when I was feeling creative I’d never get anything finished. And who feels creative on a daily basis? Thinking up a story is creative. Tying it all together in the end might be somewhat creative. The other ninety-five percent of the work is born of drive or compulsion or fear that your editor might actually kick you to the curb.
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
A. Procrastination is unprofessional and a heinous habit….
Click here for Part Two of the Interview. And coming soon! My review of All the Single Ladies now available at your favorite book store.
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! Barbara Taylor Bradford was my May author. Coming Soon! The writing duo, Tamara Thorne and Allistair Cross, Jennifer Ryan and Julia London.
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