Ann Hood talks about writing with Suite101’s Marissa Bell Toffoli. Hood’s most recent novel is The Red Thread (WW Norton & Company, 2010).
Quick Facts on Ann Hood
- Hood's website
- Home: Providence, Rhode Island
- Comfort food: spaghetti carbonara
- Top five authors: F Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Alice Hoffman, Alice Munro, Anne Tyler
- Current reads: Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
What are you working on now?
A book tour for The Red Thread. I’m also working on a new novel set in San Francisco, California.
Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?
I don’t think about it. If you have an ideal in mind it’s hard to write as honestly. I know most of my readers are probably women. When you’ve written a book called The Knitting Circle, what do you expect? I get thrilled when someone unexpected emails me about my book. I think there’s a danger in trying to write to a specific demographic or interest group; your writing loses some of its genuine truth.
Where and when do you prefer to write?
No earlier than 11 in the morning. I’m a slow riser and need to ease into my day. My perfect writing day: I take my kids to school, stop by my local café for a big cup of coffee (having already had several cups at home), and I read the New York Times and do the crossword puzzle. I kind of watch things like The View, and I procrastinate. I do my emails, and then I look up and it’s 11 o’clock. I realize I have to pick up those kids at three in the afternoon! I have a little office at home and it’s fine to sit there, but if I can, I take my computer and get back in bed with my big cup of coffee—that’s what I love. If I have a good view I get distracted; I want to go walk on that beach. I like to cocoon.
It’s been said writers can work from any place, where would you most want to live and write?
You know, I wrote my first novel [Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine] in longhand, in a notebook, on a Boeing 747 when I was a flight attendant for TWA. I had jet lag all the time because I flew internationally. I’d be in Zurich at three a.m. and wide awake in my hotel room, so I’d pull out my notebook and write. I can write anywhere. I take my computer everywhere with me now. As long as I can do it every day I’m happy.
What do you listen to when you work?
The Food Network. [Hood follows up for herself, “She says without hesitation.”] If I pick up my 17-year-old son and start telling him about how Giada De Laurentiis made the best pasta today, and that I have to bake this cake the Barefoot Contessa made, he responds, “oh, you wrote a lot today.” He knows what it means. I’ll lose whole shows; it’s just white noise. But that’s my favorite thing to have on.
Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?
I take something, the seed of truth, and pare that away until I reach the emotional truth. Joan Didion said something along the lines of we write stories to save our lives [Joan Didion’s We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live].
I grew up in an Italian American family. So many people lived in my house. I never had privacy. Our house was actually quite beautiful, but to me it was this old, embarrassing house. My great grandmother and my grandmother raised chickens. There was an outhouse in the yard. We didn’t have heat because my great grandmother was afraid of it—she thought it was bad, that the stuff coming out of radiators would kill you—so we had a coal stove. This was in the 1960s, in the middle of town; it wasn’t a rural area.
One of the popular girls at school invited me over to her split-level ranch house in a subdivision with a name out front. They had wall-to-wall powder blue shag carpeting. I had a stomachache from jealousy. I ran all the way home, opened the back door of my house where my grandmother was in the kitchen cooking tripe or something, ran upstairs and wrote a story about a grandmother disappearing. At seven, I learned that writing can help you understand the world you live in.
What advice would you give aspiring writers?
There are only two things you have to do to be a writer: Read. Write.
I worry when people are more interested in selling a book than writing a book. Writers should read everything they can, and know what’s happening in the world of writing. Don’t write in a vacuum. Love words. Write every day, and write well. Keep doing it to get better. I think of Malcolm Gladwell’s idea that to do anything well, you need 10,000 hours. I like that. It makes sense that you’d need to put in your time, keep working.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?
I like what Tim O’Brien says, which is to tell the emotional truth. That’s what I strive for. When somebody says something is universal, I think that’s what they mean; it’s emotionally true.
When not writing, what do you enjoy?
Knit. Cook. I have great kids; I like to play with them. I also travel a lot. I’m always planning my next trip, I’m a definite nomad.
About Ann Hood
Ann Hood is the author of ten books, the most recent being The Red Thread (WW Norton & Company, 2010). She attended graduate school at New York University in American Literature. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, and elsewhere.
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Marissa Bell Toffoli - Writer, editor, and poetry teacher Marissa Bell Toffoli interviews writers at http://wordswithwriters.com.
