I had finished the first draft of 'Life As We Knew It' before Katrina hit, and it was startling to see things I wrote about actually happening in the real world.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The reality of Katrina didn't really strike me until the first time I flew up in a helicopter and saw areas of the city that I had ridden my bicycle as a youth being fully flooded.
I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.
September 11 reinforced for me that whatever I'm writing about, it better be something that really matters to me because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. And for me it's stories about people in pain in New York.
Everything is a narrative in life. I learned that early on as a reporter at the 'Washington Post.'
All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.
Growing up in New Orleans helped me live a real life. I experienced so many things.
All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.
As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.
Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what's going to happen in my life.
Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.