Zitat des Tages von Susan Isaacs:
Whether you're an obstetrician or a third-grade teacher or a real estate agent, you know when you're doing good work. You're passionate about it.
Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.
It's no coincidence that I began writing the day my daughter started school. I knew everything I knew before I began to write, but I was raising two children and didn't have the time to get to the typewriter.
It's not all 'Jane Eyre' out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she's one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.
My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends' December decorating options.
With my middle-class metabolism, the suburbs were where I always wanted to be.
Style is not my long suit, but I'm really fascinated by it.
I never failed at anything in fiction.
As soon as someone is coming from New York, I automatically think I have to get dressed up.
We joined a Conservative synagogue. I began learning through engagement, rote and reading. Suddenly, I belonged... well, to the extent that a novelist can ever feel she is part of a group; we may be part of a minyan, but we're not fully merged into the community.
I have such admiration for Whoopi Goldberg as an actress and a general smart person.
At the beginning, I really wanted to be home with my kid. I was a product of my generation. But in the suburbs, you are very isolated, really alone.
There are so many different worlds in Long Island. That's why it's so fascinating. Between Great Neck and Montauk, there are 10,000 worlds.
As for writing novels - it's what I've done for 30 some-odd years. I can't suddenly say I'm going to take up golf. I need something in my life. As long as I can write a coherent sentence, I'll keep at it.
It's not that I'm apolitical... In my youth, I was a freelance political speechwriter, which taught me a lot about writing fiction, I must add.
For a novelist, no matter what, it's a complete work, even if it's not published. But if you write a screenplay, and it's not performed, then it's a sad and frustrating experience.
I must have been yearning for some Jewish content beyond my genetic makeup because soon after my 21st birthday, I noticed I was no longer dating WASPs.
