Virginia Evans

The way the story changes over time, you're sort of drawing up the sides of the clay and making the pot, you know, you're, you're pulling it up and, you know, you're pushing your thumbs in and you're raising the sides and you're digging your hands down and all the while you're spinning this wheel and you're kind of making it, making it, making it.

And I think I'm not a potter, but I've tried.

It's really hard.

It's hard to get it right.

It's hard to figure out how tall does it need to be?

How thin do the sides need to be?

How big does the base need to be?

The shape of it, you know, the whole thing and to make it sort of into this final thing.

And so that's sort of the way I write fiction.

And so I think, you know, kind of the blob that I started with was this idea of this woman and thinking, I want to tell the story of her whole life.

I would say that was kind of my process, which is not very clear.

But it's not very clear to me either, probably.

I don't think it gives anything away to say in the book, you sort of get to a point where she mentions the origin of her interest in letter writing, a letter that she was given as a child.

And it is an indicator, I think, in that as you're reading the story, you see that

how much she values this practice or this discipline or this kind of way of moving through relationships in the world of letter writing.

It's her mechanism.

It's her vehicle for life and relationships.

And in some ways, it's a very beautiful thing.

It's a very unique and elegant thing.

But on the other hand, it's a tragic thing because by conducting her relationships through letters, she is not conducting her relationships in person, you know, or in a way that's truly tragic.