One of the reasons I write in different genres is that I get to have the feeling - even fleetingly - that I'm not just writing like Baggott again. I can escape myself.
Julianna BaggottWriting is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.
Julianna BaggottI always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.
Julianna BaggottI write across genres so I see them, more often, as complementary instead of separated by boundaries.
Julianna BaggottSometimes when reading aloud to my husband, I'll start crying. It completely stuns me. As if the words in my body and on the page - in relation to each other - are cocooned against my own feelings about what I'm writing until they're loosed in the air and become their own. Then I realize what I may or may not have done.
Julianna Baggott