Generally, I can remember where I was when I had the initial notion for a book. (The adjacent photograph shows some of the notebooks I was working in including one from July 2014 with the book’s original working title Unfinished Business.) So, when I sit down to write the first chapter of a book, I’ve spent years imagining it already. In the years that follow, I’ll keep returning to the idea, picturing the characters, the settings, the events, eventually filling a few notebooks while slowly gaining an understanding of the story as a whole. I always start with a very simple idea, a conceit that has popped into my head and which can be described in a sentence.

Similarly, by changing the duration of the tale-from a year to thirty years to ten days-the structure, pacing, and scope of thematic discovery all have to change.Ĭan you tell us something about the origin of the story? By changing the setting, the era, and the cast of characters, I also must change the narrative’s perspective, tone, and poetics so that they will be true to these people in this situation at this moment in time. The reason I make a shift like this is because it forces me to retool almost every element of my craft.

The Lincoln Highway allowed me to veer again in that the novel focuses on three eighteen-year-old boys on a journey in 1950s America that lasts only ten days. That’s why after writing Rules of Civility-which describes a year in the life of a young woman about to climb New York’s socioeconomic ladder-I was eager to write A Gentleman in Moscow-which describes three decades in the life of a Russian aristocrat who’s just lost everything. When I finish writing a novel, I find myself wanting to head in a new direction. When you finished A Gentleman in Moscow, why did you choose to write The Lincoln Highway next?

Books like a gentleman in moscow