As a journalist moonlighting as a novelist, I always had notebooks at hand. I scribbled notes on the novel in between notes for work and personal life. In the smaller notebook, always kept in the pocket of my coat or trousers, are inspirational quotes from scripture and Philip Roth, recipes for leche flan and pavlova, and an important note about how to create the dinner scene with Miguel, Sadie, and Sadie's family. The reporters' notebook, which I used while working, is scribbled with to-do notes for tasks I wanted to attend to upon returning home to my novel after the long day's work at the newspaper. At my computer at home, on the kitchen table, I'd go through each notebook, and every scrap of paper (receipt, bill, envelope) on which I'd scrawled an idea, and work see if they fit into the novel. I spent my days like a magpie, collecting ideas, images, anecdotes from here and there and bringing them home to construct my novel.
Author
Picador |