RA: It’s not every editor and author who were once colleagues. You and I first met when we were both editorial assistants at St. Martin’s Press. I remember you primarily as a high-energy blond blur who suddenly was leaving us for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Did your brief time in the publishing trenches help you as an author, do you think?
EH: I remember you, Reagan, from St. Martin’s, as one of the rising superstars [ed. note: she exaggerates]. I remember that you loved Ellen Gilchrist, and then in an attempt to copy you, I started reading Ellen Gilchrist and read everything she wrote over the next year and a half. Did I learn anything about being a writer from working in publishing? Not really. I still don’t know how to read a royalty statement.
I know “where do you get your ideas” is the writer’s most dreaded question, but do you have a running list of future plot ideas? Do they come to you unexpectedly out of the blue or from a headline or from a real-life situation?
My ideas come from a mystical well, thank God. Sometimes I think thematically: “I really want to write a novel set on Tuckernuck…” or “I really want to write about a family wedding on Nantucket.” And sometimes I’m struck by a ‘what if’: What if a couple died on a sailboat and they were part of a really tight-knit group of friends and the friends all blamed themselves for various reasons?
Talk a bit about your writing process—you have, to put it mildly, a very busy and active life. How do you carve out the time for writing, and is there a particular place or time you’ve found work best for you?
My writing life has evolved. A book a year is grueling, when it also includes raising three children, promoting a book, and enjoying the kind of ridiculous social life that I do. I do a couple of things for myself to make my life easier. The fact of the matter is that I do my best work when I am alone, and by alone I mean alone alone. This past year, I spent five weeks on St. John by myself composing, and I spent seven to eight weeks in Boston revising. In between, it’s a battle between writing and life. It is, as with any working mother, a balancing act. The winter is kinder to me, but my favorite writing hours are the summer days when I pack a lunch, get on my bike, and ride to the beach to write.
Although you seem as established as any native, you did not grow up on Nantucket. Do you think coming to it as an “outsider” informs the way you look at and write about the island?
I am technically a “wash-ashore”—meaning I was not born or raised on Nantucket. However, after nineteen years, I am most certainly considered a local. My three children were born here, and they go to the public schools. I sit and have sat on numerous boards—including the Nantucket Boys & Girls Club, the Nantucket Preservation Trust, Friends of Nantucket Public Schools, and Nantucket Little League. I think it’s likely that, as someone who discovered Nantucket as an adult, I appreciate its beauty and uniqueness more than people who grew up here—my children, for example. I try to explain that I grew up two hours from the beach. My young life did not include beach picnics with sparklers, or my mother driving me out to surf at six a.m. I did not ride my bike to the Nantucket Yacht Club and sign for my BLT and then go for my tennis lesson. I did not learn to handle a thirteen-foot Boston Whaler at the age of twelve.
You’re a voracious reader. I assume this was true of you as a child—is there any one book you remember reading that made you think “I can do that” or “I want to try that”?
I read constantly as a child. All of Nancy Drew… such that I started writing my own series called “Rachel and Gretchen,” about twin girls who had varied adventures. (“Rachel and Gretchen Fly to the Moon,” “Rachel and Gretchen Make their Parents Breakfast in Bed.”) The formative books for me were predictable—A Little Princess, and Little Women. I loved the Great Brain series. When I was a teenager, I read John Cheever’s stories and J.D. Salinger, and that was all it took—I was determined to be a writer.
And when you read now, are you able to take off your writer’s hat and read for pure pleasure, or do you find yourself making mental notes about an author’s technique or style?
Now, I read constantly, incessantly… but slowly. One book at a time, always, and I always finish. Think about the mindset it takes to plow through writing a book; I bring that same work ethic/philosophy to my reading. For me, reading is working. It’s impossible to read anything without learning something about myself and my own writing. I try to read the best, most interesting stuff out there—normally always fiction, normally always contemporary, although I do go back and read the classics. Here’s the way I feel about a really good book: If my day stinks, it’s okay, because I know that when I have downtime, I will be reading and the reading will be good and that will salvage my day.
“If I weren’t a writer, I’d want to be_______.”
An anchorperson on ESPN SportsCenter.
“If I didn’t live on Nantucket, I’d want to live _____.”
In the West Village, preferably on Bleecker between Charles and Perry.