Lady Emily sails into the Salon to Find a Dead Body! Interview with Author, Tasha Alexander (1 of 3)

                   Let’s peek into Tasha’s writing world….    “any delay opens the door to the possibility of not writing at all.”

 INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR, TASHA ALEXANDER

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? 

A. Before I started to write, I had this idea—an idea many of us have at the beginning—that I would need the right sort of space in which to work. I had visions of lovely bookshelf-lined rooms with big windows and a large antique table. Reality was that I lived in an attic apartment in New Haven, where the only think that might be construed as an office or study was an unfinished section of the attic (no windows) where we had draped canvas to form a ceiling that would keep the bats from dive-bombing whoever was sitting at the computer. Not being a fan of bats, I learned quickly to be adaptable. It turns out where you write isn’t so important as it might seem. I can write in an airport lounge, a coffee shop, on a bench waiting for my son to come out of his drawing class. My preferred spot at home is my bedroom. For some reason, sitting in bed is the one place I can work without ever getting wrist or shoulder pain (you’d think it would be an ergonomic nightmare, but it’s not). I don’t have a desk (or an antique table of any size), but most of  our apartment is bookshelf-lined, so that part of the fantasy came true. And I do have a wonderful dining room table, my favorite spot for reading through and marking up manuscripts when I revise.

In the end, what matters is getting to work.   Anyone who has tried to write knows how easily life intervenes. The more flexible a writer can be about the circumstances in which he can write, the more he will write. As your career goes on, you do start to have more control over things, and that is a lovely thing. I wrote Death in the Floating City in a 15th century apartment in Venice and madly appreciated every single second I was there. That book screamed for me to be in its location while I was writing. A research trip wasn’t enough.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

A. Not really. My main thing is to start working as quickly as possible—rituals would give me an excuse to delay, and any delay opens the door to the possibility of not writing at all. I get going as soon as my son leaves for school. I drink a lot of tea, but find that it

often goes cold when I’m writing.

Q. What is your mode of writing? (long hand? Pencil? Computer? Etc.)

A. Computer, computer, computer. When I’m in research mode I take notes by hand in Moleskine notebooks, but could not possibly write a manuscript in longhand. It would take me three hundred years.

Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?

A. After ten years of writing, one thing that I can say with absolute confidence is this: The Muse is an Unreliable Hag. If you want to earn your living as a writer, it is critically important to remember this. You cannot, cannot sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. First, because it might never come, or come at such lengthy intervals as to make completing a novel impossible. Second, because a working writer has to write. You will have an agent, editors, readers, all of whom are depending on you to deliver your manuscript on time. Writing is a creative endeavor, but it is also a job, and you must conduct yourself as a professional. You must learn to train your mind to work when you need to work, not when the Muse decides to come back from the Maldives. Me, I’ve never been to the Maldives, but I’m pretty convince if I went it would be hard to drag me back.

Part two of the Interview will be posted on September 17th.

Don’t miss my Review of ‘Behind the Shattered Glass’ on October 15th
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with  best-selling AUTHORS!   “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and will feature an interview with one once a month . These authors have already responded and you can read their interviews by clicking on their name: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal,  Karen Robards, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Patrick Taylor, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Cathy Lamb, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Tasha Alexander, Raymond Benson, Andrew Grant, Heidi Jon Schmidt, Robert McCammon, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create!  July features Rhys Bowen.  Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Jeffrey Deaver is November’s author and  slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter. Loretta Chase will be featured later this year. Raymond Benson is my January author.

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