'Emily Rose' was based on a real story, and the real girl died, and there were surviving members of the family, so I took the concerns of that very seriously.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Some readers may be disturbed that I wrote 'The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson' in Emily's own voice. I wasn't trying to steal her thunder or her music. I simply wanted to imagine my way into the head and heart of Emily Dickinson.
If you are going to tell a story about a child going missing, it's going to have similarities with a real life child going missing.
All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.
That was all Rose, and Rose knew what she was doing. Her main thing was story.
I knew the term Stepford Wife, and I knew what that meant. I never read the book, and I think before I started filming I watched the movie. I thought it was very dated.
The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She's taken on a life of her own, of course.
The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.
My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated.
I just reached the point where plot-driven novels don't hold my interest because I don't care about the fate of characters anymore - whether Emily marries Tom or not, that kind of thing.
'The Girls' tells the story of Rose and Ruby Darlen, who are not only literally but spiritually attached for eternity. Born joined at the head in 1974 to a feckless teenage mother who abandons them, and reared by a delightfully open-minded adoptive couple, the Darlen girls are darling girls, indeed.