What do you consider the most challenging about writing a novel, or about writing in general? The necessary discipline involved in finishing a project.
Did writing this book teach you anything and what was it? Writing this book taught me that writing a book is about the reader. While writing my journals was about me, the revision of the material into a personal growth book was about who was reading it, in this case, someone who is going through loss and looking for signposts and inspiration to move through the crisis of it.
Do you intend to make writing a career? Writing will always be a part of what I do as a coach and a psychologist. Writing itself is not a career choice but a segment of my calling to be of service.
Have you developed a specific writing style? Probably we can call my style, intimate and self disclosing, respectful and nurturing of the reader.
What is your greatest strength as a writer? Honest self disclosure. The willingness to be attentive to the nuance of emotional states and to write until they become understandable and relevant to another person.
Have you ever had writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it? Yes, often. And the answer for me is always just to starst writing. Not long ago I read somewhere that it is easier to revise than to write. And so if I just push myself to set some thoughts down on the page, I can usually revisit, whether with the hour, the day or the week and make it something I can live with.
Can you share a little of your current work with us? My current work is about moving on, about the contrasts of life, the duplicity, the paradox and the way our psyches can conspire to cancel us out if we’re not careful- meaning, extreme consciousness is a desirable trait to cultivate.
How did you come up with the title? Actually, the title emerged from an experience I had just following my husband’s death. I was traveling, which was an important part of my healing, and I was also saying yes to new experiences, ones that would take me out of my comfort zone as long as I no longer had one if that makes any sense.
During a short excursion to a party at friends of friends, an older man began to pursue me with intention to foster an involvement. Politely, I excused myself from his presence and while writing later that night in my journal, I found myself indignant. I wrote about the episode and then quipped to myself” Can you imagine….and I a Virgin Widow.” And then I laughed and tucked away the phrase as a title for something- probably the next chapter of my life. As I wrote, the phrase became an apt description of the months that followed.
Can you tell us about your main character? My main character in this memoir self help book is me—a lively and lovely woman psychologist in her fifties who newly single, is challenged to avoid the undertow of grief and to use this adversity to grow in every way I could imagine…. Spiritually, socially, culturally, politically. I set about accepting what life presented as opportunities and then made riskier and risker choices as I developed my confidence to move further out into the world than I had during my marriage.
How did you develop your plot and characters? Life did that for me.
Who designed the cover? I had begun with Createspace and then unsatisfied with the outcome, asked a friend, an artist I the Hudson Valley to execute a concept that I described to her in a phone call. She loved the title, like me, thought it might be intriguing, and refused to settle for something that was just ordinary.. She came up with the cover design in one night and I loved it. Of course it took a week for me to choose the exact right rose for the image. I wanted something voluptuous, and emblematic of the unfolding process that is the book.
What was the hardest part about writing this book? Two things. I waited a decade to publish this as the story is a true one and the character of my husband was well known I my locale. I wanted time to pass for people’s memories and interest to fade and for my own sense of privacy to become less important. The second hard thing was choosing what to leave out. Because a memoir is my life and I wanted it to make sense to the reader, there were times where everything seemed important and to omit parts of the process would compromise the reader’s ability to follow some important threads. In the end, I did focus on only certain incidents and realizations, telling myself that one day soon I could write another book and fill in the blanks.
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Genre – NonFiction
Rating – G
Connect with Andrea Gould on Twitter
Website http://lucidlearning.com/
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