Blogfest 2009 » Wasserman Robin

Robin Wasserman on “Who are your favorite authors/what are your favorite books?”

Wasserman Robin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:30:36 +0000

I’ve got a small red bookshelf that I’ve moved from apartment to apartment over the years, always filling it with the same books. They’re not necessarily my all-time favorites, nor are they my current favorites. (For example, there’s no Michael Chabon on this list, and he’s definitely in my current top five.) They’re more like family—creased, dog-eared paperbacks that I’ve read and loved at different times in my life, novels I can always go back to when I’m in a crappy mood, knowing they’ll cheer me up or make me feel less alone or at least fill a few hours of the day. Books I love partly because I’ve read and re-read them so many times (and this is largely because for most of my life I didn’t own that many books, so in a pinch, there weren’t many options). They’re like comfort food—familiar, filling, and reliably delicious. They are:

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
The Moor’s Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Martin Bauman, David Leavitt
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins
The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
It, Stephen King (this one deserves special mention because it got me through junior high and any number of traumatic eras since then)

Robin Wasserman on “Is it harder to write the first book as opposed to the second (or third, or fourth) or does it depend on the content of what you are writing?”

Wasserman Robin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:30:23 +0000

I actually found writing my first book somewhat easier than many of the ones that followed it – probably because a) I had no idea what I was doing and so b) didn’t do a particularly good job. (For one thing, I didn’t bother including much of anything but dialog, which led to a really short first draft that read like a somewhat confusing screenplay.)

In general, I find that some books just flow, while others are an incredibly painful process slightly less enjoyable than root canals. Hacking Harvard remains the most difficult book I’ve ever written, for reasons I still don’t understand. Every chapter of that book was a battle (some waged over and over again, given how many times the first fifty pages were rewritten). Part of it was that I was reaching outside my comfort zone, adopting a tone I’d never tried before, characters it took me a long time to understand, and a plot I wasn’t quite sure how to handle; I’m sure part of it was also the fact that the book was somewhat autobiographical, and that kept getting in the way. When I finished the book, I wasn’t sure whether it was the best thing I’d ever written or the worst—and while I now think it probably falls somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, in a lot of ways, it’s my favorite. No pain, no gain, right?

Robin Wasserman on “Have you ever just wanted to give up?”

Wasserman Robin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:00:36 +0000

If by ‘give up,’ you mean ‘switch careers,’ then yes, this is something I think about all the time. But it’s less because I’m looking to give up on what I’m currently doing and more because I have a really hard time not wondering about what I might be missing. What would have happened if I’d gone to law school? If I’d majored in chemistry, or astrophysics? If I’d taken that computer science class? If I’d moved to LA and tried the whole screenwriting thing? I’m lucky to have many freakishly successful friends with a variety of envy-inducing careers, and it’s hard not to watch their lives and think ‘what if?’ On the other hand, I know if I were doing anything else, it would be killing me not to be a writer, which is a big part of the reason I keep at it.

As for just giving up because I’m tired, or because I can’t come up with any new ideas, or because I end up a big fat failure, I guess that day might come. But right now there are still too many books I want to write for me to seriously think about doing anything else.

(And if that day does come, there’s always law school…)

Robin Wasserman on “If you could have any super power, what would it be?”

Wasserman Robin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:30:34 +0000

For years, I’ve been answering this question (which comes up more than one might think) with “teleportation,” because when I was a teenager, nothing upset me more than the fact that so many of my friends – specifically the friends I felt understood the Real Me – lived so far away. (And by “so far away” I mostly mean, just over the state line in New Jersey, but – not to sound like a crotchety old lady – this was the mid-90s and so before email and cheap long-distance. I was allowed twenty minutes per month of long distance, and I remember I made a chart for my bedroom wall where I could allot specific minute counts to various friends.)

At the time, I saw this as the great tragedy of my life. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth every time I thought about the injustice that all those should-be-lifelong friendships that would probably fade away within a year. (As most of them did.)

I quickly decided I needed either a private jet or a super power. But it suddenly occurs to me that these days, most of my friends live within a couple miles, and the ones that don’t are always available by phone. Or email. Or text. Or Facebook. Or Twitter. Or…you get the idea. While I’ll admit that teleportation could still come in handy when I have a craving for a day in the Caribbean followed by dinner on the Italian Riviera, maybe that’s thinking too small. Maybe I should finally reconsider this super power thing.

Fortunately for me I watch super-power-filled Heroes and The 4400, so I’ve got plenty to choose from. (Ignoring the fact that most of those characters are miserable and always whining about how they’d rather be normal.) It’s a tough call, but I have to go with invisibility. That way I could satisfy my curiosity and find out what people are saying when I’m not in the room (almost as good as telepathy) – and, if I got really desperate for that Caribbean vacation, invisibility could come in handy for sneaking aboard a private jet.

Robin Wasserman on “What was the first thing you wrote?”

Wasserman Robin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:30:12 +0000

I don’t remember the first thing I ever wrote, but I do remember the first thing that was ever published. My local library ran a “Write and Illustrate Your Own Book” contest, so a friend and I teamed up to produce Kenny. (I wrote; she illustrated. The contest nearly lasted longer than our friendship.) We won second prize, which meant the book got bound and placed in library circulation, where real live people checked it out. (I know, because I used to check up on it obsessively.) Kenny was basically an ET ripoff, about an alien who befriends a human boy and tries to find its way back home. You can read an (embarrassing) excerpt here: http://robinwasserman.com/images/hh_kenny_text.jpg.

The thing I should probably mention about Kenny is that it was about thirty pages long, double spaced, including several full page illustrations. Granted, I was eleven at the time, but these days I get emails from people that age who are writing novels. It makes me feel like a bit of a slacker.

On the other hand, given how derivative and snooze-worthy Kenny was, thirty pages was probably more than enough…