Questions from an attentive reader

From months of inactivity, I have returned to  the blog and find myself  writing frenetically  to answer some very perceptive questions posed to me by an attentive reader who has just begun reading Verdi's Dream but has lots of "writer's" questions for me.  She writes:


"I have just begun the text which certainly engages me. And I'm a very picky reader. Chpt. Two -- two guys, an Italian peasant and an American MIT man, couldn't be more different from each other, -- their thoughts, their feelings drawn with absolutely extraordinary skill. Brava!
You do seem to have the ability to be within each person and to bring back, in time slowed down to allow for intricate articulation, the inner workings of each. Do you know how you developed this capacity? Can you tell us? Or why this cluster of voices chose to speak through you?"


Well, of course I couldn't pass on questions like those. What writer could? My (long-winded) response:


I am not sure I understand the capacity you are talking about, probably because I am an almost completely instinctive or intuitive writer. I just feel the characters. I see them in a given situation. Afterward, when I get to the 2nd and 3rd drafts, I am quite good at analyzing the purpose of each scene and of each bit of dialogue ad nauseam, but this always comes after the fact--the fact being what I see and feel them doing on their first appearance. Somehow I seem to know how it all fits in to the overall story, even if I have no idea, in a 1st draft, how the story will play out though I usually know the beginning and the (general) outcome (as Kevin Kline so brilliantly said in A Fish Called Wanda, "What's the middle thing again?"; and I firmly believe the middle thing in fiction is the hardest to write, but more about that another time).

I am lucky, I think, in that in most cases when it's time for craft to enter the equation the reasons for each bit in the book, great or small, ultimately become clear to my rational writer's mind. I think it is somewhat akin, believe it or not, to a gift of mimicry I have always had. When I was a little girl my mother would say she couldn't take me anywhere because I would unwittingly ape the expressions on the faces of the adults we were with. As a writer, all I am doing is mimicking my characters. I just feel them and write it down. This is not to say it makes for good writing. That would be a completely idiotic statement because writing fiction has too many intricate components each fraught with problems. But it's a start, given my absolute conviction that good fiction is always character-driven.

Perhaps a corollary answer to your query is that on some very very deep level, we all write about our identity and our obsessions no matter how we gussy them up or disguise them. My obsessions (who I am and why) are multiple, and Verdi's Dream contains them all in spades, a bit within each character no matter how extremely different these characters are (and I think they are very different). They all coexist in me, however, and have simply found their voices through these characters.

Lordy, I do carry on.
So glad you are liking the book. I am 'chuffed', as the Brits say."


Would love to hear from others on these matters. Please  do comment below, if so inclined.