For six and a half years, I had been wrestling with the story that would evolve into Life and Other Complications. I wrote other things during that time, but I kept coming back to this one, because it mattered to me, and it wasn’t right. I am the kind of writer who could revise until the end of time. But my struggle with this story wasn’t my usual desire to tweak. There was something deeper missing, something I couldn’t pin down.
And then during a workshop at the Highlights Foundation, I wrote a letter from the perspective of my main character. As soon as I looked at the words on the page, I knew that I had stumbled onto something vital—emotion. This whole time, I had been trying to write an emotional story without digging too far below the surface. And it just hadn’t worked. So I wrote another letter and then another. I even tried writing the entire novel in letters. And there in Aly’s own words, I found the heart of the story. The emotion.
The editors and I later agreed that the final book only needed a few letters. But writing the novel in nothing but letters had served an invaluable purpose. It had helped me find Aly’s heart, and her voice.