Hunting Mythical Monsters 'At The Water's Edge'
I think it was an absolutely fantastic background to have. I always wanted to write, it's why I got a degree in English literature, but then of course I had a degree in English and I had to find a job — so I was very very happy to find a living doing anything writing. Like in Seinfeld, and Elaine writing for the J. Peterman catalog. I would have written umbrella descriptions and been happy for it. But I also have, you know, I'm sort of tech minded, and I have kind of a mathematical side of my brain as well, so tech writing was a very natural fit for me because I could write, and, you know, you are using your writing skills.
The difference, of course, is that when somebody enters a help file, they're already in a bad mood, they don't want to read, they're not happy, so I was giving them exactly the information they wanted, nothing but, and in the order they needed it. Get them in, get them out, get their problem sorted, but then when I was finished doing the writing part or if I got exhausted, I was you know coding and compiling executable files for the help files and so I just switched to the mathematical part and did debugging for a while and then my brain would be fresh again and so it was really — I liked it. ... If luck and fate hadn't pushed me in this direction, I still would have been a perfectly happy technical writer.
On topping her past successes
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I'm not trying to. I mean it would be, if I tried it would be not just be hard, it would be impossible, so I don't tend to think "oh, I peaked at 38," I tend to think "I'm so happy about what happened with Water for Elephants, but I know I was struck by lightning." You know? And it's not going to happen again and that's ok. I get to keep doing what I love to do, and I'm going to — If I were writing thinking about the audience and thinking about sales, I wouldn't turn out good stories, and the thing I love about writing fiction is allowing the characters to take over and going in unexpected directions and really just kind of channeling the story that comes to me so that I get into a place where I feel like I'm recording instead of creating and I have to be unaware of the entire world when I'm doing that, so no. I took the pressure off myself. I live a very very normal life with my kids. I do laundry every day.
Read an excerpt of At the Water's Edge