Meg Wolitzer
Meg Wolitzer
Meg Wolitzeris an American writer, best known for The Wife, The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, and The Interestings. She currently works as an instructor in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth28 May 1959
CountryUnited States of America
moving book giving
When I wrote The Interestings, I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this.
sex book writing
I've been waiting for someone to sign the permission slip for me to write about sex. In the meantime, I've written about sex in all my books anyway.
mother important groups
Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us.
book light fire
Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.
sleep someone-you-like
Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.
book writing thinking
Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.
researchers
I have never been much of a researcher
creative busy lifetime
The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.
passion thinking people
We are all here, on this earth for only one go around. And everyone thinks their purpose is to just find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is to find what other people need.
rooms culture fierce
We do seem, as a culture, to fetishize the "sweep." But I know there's room for "big" short, fierce novels, and "big" solid ones.
passion long-ago people
People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness.
book passion thinking
But it's never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don't think. It's also the way the students are with one another . . . the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.
children parent jackpot
The child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot.
crazy book ideas
We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one.