Q&A TÉA OBREHT61 POETS & WRITERS^incredible solitude and how everything
for someone like that must exist in the
m ind. Nora is liv ing in t hat k ind of iso-
lation, and if you couple that with rage,
which Nora has in spades, I realized
everything for her, at least internally,
must be at a constant roil, which really
helped me to write from her voice.
That’s part of what makes Nora so com-
pelling, how unlikeable she can be.
I didn’t want to make her one of the
good guys, particularly in her rela-
tionship to Native people. Her feeling
that they are encroaching on her rather
than the other way around was some-
thing I really wanted to ring true. I felt
that to save her in that way would be
dishonest not only to the project, but
to the way that everyday people who
saw themselves as “good” at that time
probably were. I wanted to hem her in
on all sides and have her first reaction
to everything be rage and see what
happened.
Were there multiple drafts for the book?
I always do multiple drafts. I feel like
I write like a short story writer in that
I have to see the whole thing before I
know what it is. At first I think, “Oh,
if I just get this sentence perfect then I
won’t have to throw all of this out.” But
it quickly becomes, “No, you’re writing
the whole thing and then you’re throw-
ing it in the garbage and starting over.”
It’s awful, isn’t it?
[Laughter.] There’s nothing worse than
being at the beginning of the first draft
and realizing, I’m here to learn a les-
son; I don’t know what the lesson is,
but at the end of the lesson I will have
to start from nothing.
What were the differences in the writing
process for this and The Tiger’s Wife?
I think the biggest difference was
that I had to wait a really long time.
As with any other discipline, there
are moments when you come to the
edge of your ability, like your ability
to recognize the project and your ca-
pacity are not on the same ground. So
I had to write a lot of short stories and
scenes that went nowhere, and char-
acter sketches that never made it into
the book, to have some sort of break-
through in seeing what I was doing. In
The Tiger’s Wife, a lot of it was baked
in because the triggering event of the
book was deeply personal, and for this
it took a really long time to find out
what I was even interested in asking.
So it was a lot of running around in
circles for about three years. Now I’m
okay with that, but for a long time I
wasn’t, because it feels like, when
you’re in it, maybe you’ll never get
there. When I finished The Tiger’s
Wife, I thought I knew how to do this.
Now I know I have no idea. [Laughter.]In the moments of waiting, when you were
running around in circles or experiencing
writer’s block, how did you work through
it? Are there other things besides writ-
ing that inspire you or help you clear your
head?
My fi r st l i ne of defen se ag a i n st w r iter’s
block is to go to the theater. Watch-
ing how writers, actors, and directors
manipulate the restrictions of the form
is incredibly stimulating; I’ve almost
never come home from a play wanting
to do anything but write.
One of writing’s great frustrations is
that you can work all day, all week, all
month even, and have nothing to show
for it; so to counteract the despair and
Twilight Zone-ishness of this, I’ve also
recently started learning joinery.What is joinery?
It’s essentially woodworking where
you fit pieces of wood together to
make something more complex. I’m
an absolute beginner and expect ev-
erything I make to give way any sec-
ond; but I derive a lot of satisfaction
from being able to tangibly measure
progress in the discipline. When you
write for two hours, you can somehow
inexplicably end up with fewer words
than you started with; but if you saw
a piece of wood in half, you will have
two pieces of wood every time. It’s
incredible.That sounds so satisfying. When you do
have a good day of writing, what does that
look like, and how do you know it has been
a success?
I used to write exclusively from about
9 PM to 5 AM. And even now, if I re-
ally hit my stride, particularly in the
generative phase, I simply won’t stop,
even if it means working through the
night. Of course, that comes with
consequences: I’m older now, and I
live with another human, and in a city
that requires me to be passably coher-
ent and find my way from place to place
almost every day, so I do try to stick
to bankers’ hours and make writing a
daily discipline, 9 to 5 instead of 5 to 9,
usually at the desk in my home office.
A good writing day will end with the
desire to keep writing—that’s one of
the only aspects of this whole process
that has remained constant for me.This is, perhaps, a tough question, but
what is your mind-set going into the re-
lease of Inland, especially after the phe-
nomenal success of The Tiger’s Wife?
To tell you the truth, I spent so long
waiting to connect this way with an-
other project after The Tiger’s Wife that
by the time I started writing Inland, my
only focus was to get the story right;
to give the characters room to grow in
whatever direction they must; and par-
ticularly, owing to the elements of real
history on which it is based, to do the
whole mad, wild, unbelievable legend
even an ounce of justice. The thought
of no longer getting to work on it al-
ready makes me quite sad, but I’m ex-
cited to get to talk about the book and
its history and hopeful that readers will
find their way to it.Do you have expectations for the way the
book will be received?
I generally do my level best to avoid
expectations. The most I can reason-
ably expect is that Inland will live in an
indeterminate number of bookshops
for an indeterminate period of time,
hopefully sandwiched between The
Tiger’s Wife and one of Tim O’Brien’s
books. Anything else is a gift.