What made you decide to write this non-fiction work? I’ve been writing the essays that in Animal Bodies for a long time. The oldest essay in the collection is probably from 2008, though all the essays have been revised many times. I realized I had a book of essays on love and loss, desire and grief but also a collection about what it means to hide or deny or feel shame about our animal natures, and that’s how the collection holds together.
Can you talk about your experience of researching this non-fiction work? And the dates of when you began researching and when your research was complete? I didn’t think most readers realize that even personal essays take a lot of research. For example, for an essay called “Breaking the Codes,” I went back and real all the letters I received in junior high school, so sometimes the research is into our own pasts.
What is the date you began writing this piece of non-fiction and the date when you finished writing the piece of non-fiction? As I mentioned earlier, I probably started writing some of these essays about 2008. The first published piece from the collection appeared in 2012. My last edits were due to my press last summer, in September of 2021, so I’ve been working on this book for more than 10 years.
Where did you do most of your writing for this non-fiction work? I write every chance I get, so some of the essays were composed in my house, while others were written in DIY writing retreats or in hotel rooms in various foreign cities. I finally have a great office/library in my house – a lifetime dream – but I still write wherever I am. The last essay in the book, “Dreaming in the Time of Wildfire” was written during our wildfire evacuation last summer!
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I drink gallons of tea. I usually start an essay in my journal by hand. And I write at all hours of the day, whenever I am able to make the time. I don’t think we find inspiration: I think we make it.
Please include an excerpt of one FACT or one set of FACTS that you were most impacted by in this non-fiction work. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. I did a lot of research on birds from my essay “Becoming Bird,” which is about the death of a dear friend too soon from cancer. I was struck by the fact that red-tailed hawks catch, kill, and eat rattlesnakes.
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Why was this one fact or one set of facts so compelling for you to discover and to write about? I learned about the fact as I was drafting and then went out for a run and saw this very thing. You will have to read the essay to see why this was such an extraordinary experience!
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Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I overwrite, so this manuscript was twice the length that it currently is: One essay in the book is 10 pages, and now it is one paragraph – talk about killing my darlings! There’s another essay I cut from the book that wasn’t quite ready at the time of publication, but it’s ready now, and I have been sending it out for publication. And there’s. yet another essay I’m currently working on that was also cut from the book called “Facts about Gulls,’ but I’m not ready to share that one yet!
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