It was clear to me that this story, with its four main characters-Louisa, the skittish daughter of a molecular geneticist, raised in the wake of her mother's mysterious death Bear, the hot-tempered son of a plumber, who has made his way to their elite college on an athletic scholarship Andrew, the son of a radical political science professor, who is attempting to define himself through his risky travels and Corrine, Louisa's once babysitter and now sexually adventurous best friend-was the heart of the collection, and that the story about a mother and daughter (transformed in the book into Louisa's aunt and her cousin Lizzy) that begins in 1961 should be the prequel. I started with two independent sets of linked stories, one of which is the title story, "Louisa Meets Bear. Did you know this was going to be the structure when you started, or did it evolve? I deeply admired the structure of Louisa Meets Bear., the way the stories are linked, the connections made between the characters and unmade. With my new novel, I've added the goal of trying to create an elegant structure such that the aesthetic experience of the book moves beyond language and includes its form, as is the case in some of my favorite novels. With my second novel, Tinderbox, I did the same, but I also spent a great deal of preliminary time working out the storyline and how it would unfold so as to allow for dramatic tension and elements of mystery. For my first novel, A Private Sorcery, I wrote case studies for each of the characters with the aim of knowing them as well as my closest intimates. What that preliminary work consists of has evolved as I've evolved as a writer. With both of the novels I've published and with the one I'm at work on now, I've done an enormous amount of preliminary work. By contrast, I can't hold a novel in my mind save with the broadest strokes. It's only after I have the first draft that I step back and look at it with a cooler, editor's eye, searching for what's missing, what's superfluous-what are the themes. With poems, stories and essays, I can, for the most part, hold the piece in my mind, beginning with a strong impulse and seeing where it will take me. What’s your writing process like? Do you map things out or just follow that pesky muse? Threaded throughout the book are characters who move from working-class communities into upper-class ones, struggle to find the place of work and children in their lives, and traverse different phases and kinds of love. Originally, I set out to put together a collection, but as I reread the pieces, I had the uncanny feeling that together they told a larger story about some of the social and psychological transformations that have taken place over the past fifty years. This book started as individual stories-some of which date back in their earliest versions several decades. I always want to know what sparks a book? What was haunting you at the time that made you want to write this?
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