<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Q: The story is told from the perspectives of Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson, in alternating chapters. Was it difficult to constantly switch from narrator to narrator? A: Actually, I loved that! I don&amp;#039;t have a multiple personality disorder, but one life has never been enough for me. Which is why being a writer is such a great thing, I get to be lots of different people and lots of different genders. I&amp;#039;ve written a couple of novels from a male point of view. And in this one I got to be gay and that was interesting too\u2014and took me by surprise. Q: How was that\u2014writing a woman whose sexuality is different from your own? A: Our sexuality, whether we&amp;#039;re heterosexual or homosexual\u2014we&amp;#039;re also just sexual. So I imagined if I were making love to a woman, what would be important? And if a woman was making love to me, what would be important? And those were actually the best sex scenes I&amp;#039;ve ever written! I also like that it&amp;#039;s a novel where their sexual orientation isn&amp;#039;t a huge topic. They just happen to be lesbians. When I started developing the character of Dana I didn&amp;#039;t know she was going to be gay. At some point in your writing, if you&amp;#039;re doing a good job, the character takes on a life of her own and she tells you what&amp;#039;s going to happen. Q: Do you like writing sex scenes even more than other scenes? A: I do! And in the novel, Ruth does erotic drawings and as a kid I used to do that. I was very precocious in that way\u2014I remember doing drawings of men and women together. I would sort of make up positions. I think I got into trouble one time in junior high when one of my notes was intercepted. Q: You&amp;#039;ve said that The Good Daughters was inspired by real-life news stories. Where else do you get ideas for your novels? A: The question is, where don&amp;#039;t I? I read headlines from the National Enquirer, I study bulletin boards, Craigslist, listen in on the subway, or at the laudromat, or in line at the supermarket. One of the prerequisites for being a good writer is being a nosy person. I always have my ear to the ground for a good story and I&amp;#039;m always looking at characters. Q: You were published by The New York Times at age 18. How did you accomplish such great success at a young age? A: I grew up in a small town in a troubled family, and for me, writing was my ticket out. I started writing for Seventeen magazine when I was 14 and that led to me sending a letter the editor in chief of The New York Times saying, &amp;quot;I want to write for you.&amp;quot; I was 18 at the time, and amazingly, they said okay and gave me an assignment. That really launched my career. Q: Your last book, Labor Day, has been adapted for the screen by Jason Reitman (director of Juno and Up in the Air). And one of your earlier novels, To Die For, was also turned into a film. Do you worry that your story will lose its meaning in someone else&amp;#039;s hands? A: No, I have enormous respect for Jason. Once a book gets made into a film, you have to let go of it. It&amp;#039;s a little bit like what you do with a child: at some point they&amp;#039;re on their own and you can&amp;#039;t hold them too close. So Labor Day, the film, will be partly his and partly my story. But I feel that it&amp;#039;s in very good hands and I&amp;#039;m excited to see how it comes out. Q: You&amp;#039;ve been teaching a writing workshop since 2002. What have you noticed about young writers today versus how you were when you were just starting out? A: There&amp;#039;s so much media now, a lot of young people are all about Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, texting. I think those are wonderful tools, but I think they&amp;#039;re hugely distracting. They can take you away from the kind of focus and discipline that will allow you to make a deeply meaningful piece of work. So one of my first pieces of advice to a writer working on their first book is to unplug. If I&amp;#039;m working on a book, I don&amp;#039;t check my e-mail until the end of the day. It starts your day off in a completely different way if you start off by shutting out the world. Q: You&amp;#039;re not afraid of tackling controversial topics\u2014incest, 9/11, your breast implants, even losing all of your money. How do you find the guts to take such risks? A: I didn&amp;#039;t always have them. But I was the object of so much criticism and condemnation when I published my first memoir, At Home in the World, that it was going to either destroy me or liberate me. I hope that it liberated me. As a young writer, I tried to please everybody. But now, I just need to feel approval from within that I&amp;#039;m doing the right thing. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/career/advice/a3300/how-to-become-an-author/?src=global_footer>