2008 Woodie Awards
Author reveals secrets behind writing method
Chris Boning
Issue date: 8/17/08 Section: TruLife
CB: What's your writing process like?
DM: I start out by writing an outline of the book. I write a history of the characters, starting with their birth. Not all the characters, but the main characters because I need to know who these people are and at any given point in their lives what they were doing. ... I write an outline and then three pages long-hand, and then I transfer that into the computer and when I do that I do my first edit. Then the next day, I will read the three pages I put to the computer and do another polish/edit on them. Then I write my three pages long-hand and put those into the computer. And the next day read those again, so it's kind of like a leapfrogging thing, ... but in the beginning, it's very much [the] long-hand is the characters' voices. ... The characters pretty much dictate the novel to me. I feel like I'm taking dictation from them.
CB: What inspired "The Safety of Secrets"?
DM: I had finished my first novel, "The Aftermath of Dreaming," which is about a young woman in a relationship with a man much older than her, and while I enjoyed exploring that topic, I was ready to leave behind that area of relationships for a while and move into another area. And for me, another area that is extremely important is my friendships with women. They really are the bedrock of my life, and when I thought about friendships with women, it made me think about the issues of loyalty and betrayal, and about the one thing [that connects] both of those. I realized it was a secret. A secret can be the one thing that binds us closer together and exactly the thing that tears two people apart, so I thought that was interesting. I decided to look at friendship that has secrets from its past and really a glue holding them together, and I wanted to look at, would that friendship survive if that secret was let loose in the world?
CB: Are there any characters in the book you personally identify with?
DM: I would probably say more Fiona. She is a fictive character, but I did give her pretty much [the bulk] of my acting career because it worked well for what I wanted her career to be like, and it was kind of fun getting to set up the situations in Hollywood, which are so vastly important when someone is in them, but looking back it's all kind of funny and ridiculous ... But, finally, she's a fictive character. It is fiction, [and] all of the tragedies and things that happen to her are not things I experienced at all. But in terms of a voice and an outlook at the world in terms of being from the South and living in Los Angeles and having a kind of fish-out-of-water, Southern mentality in L.A. - that's very much me.
DM: I start out by writing an outline of the book. I write a history of the characters, starting with their birth. Not all the characters, but the main characters because I need to know who these people are and at any given point in their lives what they were doing. ... I write an outline and then three pages long-hand, and then I transfer that into the computer and when I do that I do my first edit. Then the next day, I will read the three pages I put to the computer and do another polish/edit on them. Then I write my three pages long-hand and put those into the computer. And the next day read those again, so it's kind of like a leapfrogging thing, ... but in the beginning, it's very much [the] long-hand is the characters' voices. ... The characters pretty much dictate the novel to me. I feel like I'm taking dictation from them.
CB: What inspired "The Safety of Secrets"?
DM: I had finished my first novel, "The Aftermath of Dreaming," which is about a young woman in a relationship with a man much older than her, and while I enjoyed exploring that topic, I was ready to leave behind that area of relationships for a while and move into another area. And for me, another area that is extremely important is my friendships with women. They really are the bedrock of my life, and when I thought about friendships with women, it made me think about the issues of loyalty and betrayal, and about the one thing [that connects] both of those. I realized it was a secret. A secret can be the one thing that binds us closer together and exactly the thing that tears two people apart, so I thought that was interesting. I decided to look at friendship that has secrets from its past and really a glue holding them together, and I wanted to look at, would that friendship survive if that secret was let loose in the world?
CB: Are there any characters in the book you personally identify with?
DM: I would probably say more Fiona. She is a fictive character, but I did give her pretty much [the bulk] of my acting career because it worked well for what I wanted her career to be like, and it was kind of fun getting to set up the situations in Hollywood, which are so vastly important when someone is in them, but looking back it's all kind of funny and ridiculous ... But, finally, she's a fictive character. It is fiction, [and] all of the tragedies and things that happen to her are not things I experienced at all. But in terms of a voice and an outlook at the world in terms of being from the South and living in Los Angeles and having a kind of fish-out-of-water, Southern mentality in L.A. - that's very much me.
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