Why? Probably because I was terrified of writing my next novel. I have been working on what I call, in my notebooks, “novel number nine” for more years than I want to admit. I start it, write two hundred or so pages and let myself be tempted into another project—a novel about Sappho in ancient Greece, a memoir about my life as a writer, anything that will distract me from the novel bubbling in my brain. After many false starts, I finally know novel number nine has to be about Isadora Wing as a woman of a certain age. That fills me with fear of writing. Going back to my most famous heroine after the ravages of time have chastened us both cannot be a painless proposition. Isadora has baggage and so does her author. It may be Goyard or Vuitton baggage, but it’s baggage nonetheless. And despite what my loyal readers may think, I have never found it easy to reveal myself on the page. I wrote my first novel, Fear of Flying, telling myself no one would ever read it. I wrote my other novels that way too—though the pretense was harder to achieve.
