I thought I’d share this interview with you. As you know, I was sick for quite a while. Getting better now. But it’s been a struggle to do what nourishes me – being creative – during this time. At the same time, it’s what’s kept me going.
It’s been the grist to my mill.
This interview was on Salon. It’s with Laura Hillenbrand, the best-selling author of “Seabiscuit: An American Legend”. Her newest book, “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption,” comes out soon.
It’s a trade-off for me. While it’s really hard to do, at the same time, I’m escaping my body, which I really want to do. I’m living someone else’s life. I get very intensely into the story, into the interviews and the research. I’m experiencing things along with my subjects. I have a freedom I don’t have in my physical life.
Writing is a godsend to me that way. Without it I wouldn’t have anything. I am completely still almost all the time. A lot of time I don’t leave the upstairs. What I have is the story I’m working on. It’s a wonderful thing for me to get out of my body for a while.
Because my life is so silent and so still, I think I’m able to get deeper into what I’m working on. My mind is willing to get out of here and go into there. It becomes such an intense experience….
I don’t remember what it’s like to feel well. I’m 43. I was 19 when I got sick. It’s a lifetime ago. It’s hard for me to imagine what I would have been as a writer without the history I have now. We’re all sitting in our particular circumstances and writing from that place.
Laura’s silence and stillness allows her to go deeper. I wrote about creating “quietness buffers” the other day. Sometimes being sick – or held back – is just that – a quietness buffer thrust upon you. Comforting in some way, don’t you think?
