spent writing or with her family. In Baltimore, Tyler has a second floor writing room where she
leaves the window open, listening to everyday life and sounds outside. From here, she listens
to parents and children, neighborhood chatter and daily life. (A Spool of Blue Thread often
invoked this experience.)
Tyler prefers to write in longhand, then types the words and finally she records her words
and listens.
On her wall she has printed lines from Richard Wilbur’s poem Walking to Sleep:
As a queen sits down, knowing that a chair will be there,
Or a general raises his hand and is given the field-glasses,
Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.
Something will come to you.
“I see those words as about getting an idea and making a book. I don’t get anxious. It will
come to you, let it come in.” Anne Tyler
A Spool of Blue Thread is set in Roland Park, the neighborhood Tyler has lived in since 2008.
She wanted to write “a multi-generational family saga that never ended.” Tyler has no plans
for retirement as she “never developed any hobbies…I’ll carry on writing because that is what
I do…my happiest moment is to be in the middle of a book. The characters are talking
to me. Sometimes, one will make a joke I haven’t thought of and I’ll laugh.”
Tyler’s books have a domestic focus:
“I start every book thinking, “This one will be different” and it’s not. I have
my limitations. I am fascinated by how families work, endurance, how do we get
through life.” “We’re endlessly striving and keeping going. How many times we hurt
each other in families or drift apart or do harm – and then we come back together
and try over again. It’s very heartening and touching.”
Oh the tensions and secrets of family relationships!
Join the discussion Thursday, March 2, 2017