isabel allende in the midst of winter summary

When I start a book, I imagine that I enter with a candle into a large dark room where the story and the characters are hiding. They approved the script, but for the life of me, I could not follow it. For that matter, I could not dress him in a pink tutu or make him Bulgarian or vegetarian. In 2005, I had to come up with one for my novel Zorro because the character is owned by a corporation and they needed to be sure that I would treat the hero with due respect.

Not much of a plan or a script, which has never worked for me. January 8 came, as it always does, and all the material I had was a brownstone in Brooklyn, maybe a corpse or two, a finicky professor at NYU, and an undocumented immigrant. “Write about refugees,” said Lori, my daughter-in-law, who runs my foundation and gets to see tragic cases among our grantees.Īfter the holidays, I returned home to the Bay Area. “Write about me,” added another friend, who is a scholar. “Write about this neighborhood,” said a friend, and she told us bloody stories about the Italian mafia who owned many of those houses when she was growing up. “Write about this house,” said one of my grandkids. I had no idea and was beginning to panic. We were having breakfast and someone asked what was I going to write in January. I had rented a brownstone to spend the holidays with my family and some friends. The weather was so warm that people were walking around in short sleeves. It’s all trial and error.įor In the Midst of Winter, it all began in December 2015 in Brooklyn. That’s why I don’t like talking about the book in progress, because whatever I write today may be deleted tomorrow.

In most cases, all I have is a vague idea that will evolve and change completely in the months to come. Do I always have a plan for a book on that date? Not really. Discipline means that I show up in front of my computer every day, and every year I start on January 8. I apply some skill, hard work, and attention to the subtle connections between people and events to that raw material and, with some discipline, my books come to be.

There are stories in the air: they exist all around us, and they need to be told. This has given me the opportunity to think about creativity and try to unravel its mysteries. In the last few months, I have been editing and revising the English translation of my latest novel, In the Midst of Winter.

I often don’t even know what the book is about until it’s been published and the reviews come out. I have been writing for 35 years, and have written 23 books.

Isabel allende in the midst of winter summary