Alice Sebold

Sebold often reads poetry for inspiration before she starts her daily writing. She says: “There’s something about reading the right poets that makes your own drive a little bit more diffuse. When I finally get to the page, I’m not hammering at it like a nail, I’m more available to the subconscious than I would be if it was just all me and my narrative lines. But every novel is so different in its process and in its characters and the writer’s attachment, when it’s written, what stage of life, all that stuff […] It feels like I’ve finally reached a point where I’m working in a way that I really enjoy.”

Alice Sebold gets up every day at 4 a.m. to write because, she says, “If you start in the dark, the judges are all asleep.” On finding her character’s voices, she says: “It takes me so long to find the character, by the time I find her, it feels like she’s been waiting around tapping her foot for years. She’s impatient and ready to tell her story.”

Writer's Almanac