When author/critic Matthew Turbeville named his blog WRITERS TELL ALL, he meant it! We had a wide-ranging conversation about HOLD ME DOWN, books, and the writing process. You can read the entire interview here.
Here’s an excerpt:
Matthew Turbeville: Hey Clea! It’s so exciting to get to pick your brain about Hold Me Down. This is a really exciting and thrilling new crime novel that’s grounded in Boston and music and a lot of topics really relevant to America today and women in general. Can you talk a little about how you conceived Hold Me Down and how long it took to write? Did this novel in particular end up how you wanted it to be as when you first sat down to write the first draft? How did it change?
Clea Simon: I can try, Matthew, but honestly, I’m not sure I remember. I’ve been working on Hold Me Down for several years now. I don’t know how many drafts I went through, though I can tell you that every time I sent out a draft to a reader, thinking I was done, I would find issues – usually with the tense changes and I’d be appalled!
For me, this was the kind of book that gets deeper with each iteration, though. Like, take the songs in the book. I knew that Gal, my protagonist, wrote songs, and so I came up with some. But only after a few revisions did I realize how revealing these songs were – not only of what she thought she was writing, but what she was really showing about herself. (I have to add here that I love having these songs – because once they’re written, they stand on their own. Different characters react to them in different ways. Even Gal reacts to her own songs in different ways over time! … read the rest here.