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
break created crossword favorite good knew later online playing scrabble strange writer
My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things.
falls others people time
In 'The Interestings' I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away.
everywhere family games growing knew letter love mother played took
I really love Scrabble. I played it with my mother growing up. We took it everywhere with us. We didn't know then about the two letter words. Who knew that AA, or more controversially, ZA, or QI were words? We were a games family generally.
books both contain convey emotional experience leap realizing seeing sitting strong words
'Charlotte's Web,' which I read sitting on my mother's lap, was the most emotional experience: that was when I made the leap from seeing how to untangle words to realizing how books both contain and convey strong feelings.
image puts written
If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book.
drawn mind remain
I've always been drawn to writing for young readers. The books that I read growing up remain in my mind very strongly.
wall kids rocks
The minute you had kids you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls—even if you'd once been best friends—was now just that, outsiders.
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.
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.
lonely children long
You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you’d given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn’t know the outcome for a long time.
researchers
I have never been much of a researcher
dream knowing ideas
"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.
ideas dry might
For me, a novel relying too heavily on a single idea might be a dry, deadly thing unless it possesses an animating force.
college different world
This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it...