Annabel Monaghan on Her Path to Writing

Annabel Monaghan

Author, Mom, Sister

What book changed your life?

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and I know that's the most basic human functioning book. But when I was getting ready to go to college, that somehow fell into my hands and it gave me just sort of a big picture way to think about life—and I go back to those things. I think it's a great one. My children have read it, and from what I can tell they've gotten nothing out of it. They have improved in no way at all. But maybe it's going to sink in later.

What’s the weirdest thing in your tote bag?

I carry these index cards, but they're six by six squares. They're rather large, and I write down ideas on them and then I shove them back in my bag, and periodically I will look in my bag and find something like “squirrel chases rabbit down street,” and I don't even know what it meant or where I was going with it. But I have all of these cards where I jot ideas down. It's sometimes helpful and sometimes not.

What’s the best thing that happened in the 80s?

I think Prince is the best thing that happened in the '80s, besides the day that I stopped perming my hair. That was really a step in the right direction for me.

Annabel’s flipping the script.

We are always interested to learn whether you had any concept of what you kind of wanted to be when you grew up, early on in your life?

I knew exactly what I wanted to do probably by the time I was six years old, but I didn't get around to doing it until I was 37 years old. I always wrote as a little kid, and I was a good English student. Those were my best classes in high school, and I chose my university because it had a strong English program. I took all the classes and I was set to become a writer. When I was a senior in college, all my friends were moving to New York City and I also wanted to move to New York City, but didn't have any money. And so I didn't understand, and I didn't even have anyone to ask, “If you want to be a novelist, how do you buy food?” 

Instead, I got a job at a bank and I worked in an analyst program for two years and didn't actually get back to writing until I was 37 years old and had three children.

We saw you even went to business school, did you keep going down that path?

I really am hard pressed to think of anyone who is as far off the track in terms of who they are than I was in the '90s. 

I went to business school because I don't know, I was just on a track. You know how you just sort of keep moving? Everybody was going to business school and I honestly really enjoyed it. I met my husband there. I met great friends. It was like paddling upstream. I mean, it was just so counter to my skill set, and then I came out and I worked in investment banking again for a couple years, and then when I got pregnant, I was like, "I don't want to do this anymore," and I was home with children for nine years before I started writing. 

You taught novel writing (taking on the adage that “those who can’t do, teach”). What was it like to teach something creative and subjective?

I can tell you what I think it should be, and then I can tell you what it was. It should be giving people structure in which to tell their stories. So what you want to do is say, "You need to start with a character who's in a situation, and then something happens and they go on a journey, and they learn something and it resolves," and that's the structure. What really ends up happening is you're their buddy. You're their person who's like, "I think you can go deeper. Tell me a little more about that." It's a little bit of therapy work where you're just pulling a story out of somebody. We would sit around a table and all we were really doing was creating space for each other where it would be safe to try.

One of the things we learned watching The Beatles documentary this year is that Paul was very much a workhorse when it came to sitting down and writing, whereas John had to sort of be struck by inspiration and a sense of urgency. We like to ask writers whether they are Paul or John. 

I think I would say both. They say there are the plotters and the pantsers. A plotters is somebody who sits down and makes an outline of a book and then starts writing a book, and God bless those people because their lives must be so easy to live.

I'm not that kind of person. I get a tingly feeling about something and I start writing, and inspiration doesn't come to me unless I'm actually writing. I just have to start writing. I start writing about these characters and they start interacting, and then they start telling me things, and then I follow them where they're going. It's a very heart-focused rather than mind-focused approach to writing, and sometimes you end up with a story. Sometimes you end up with a horror movie. I mean, it's just a mess, and that's when I have to stop and switch to the other side of my brain and think, "Wait, does this follow?" And then fix things. So you make a mess and then you clean it up. 

My ideas definitely come from outside of me. Sometimes I’ll be typing and then I'll go, "Whoa, whoa. I've never thought of that before." It just sort of comes in a very just loose way, but I am a very hard worker. I wake up at five o'clock in the morning and work for a couple hours before my family wakes up, and I stay after it. I’ve had years where I have not sat down to write, and interestingly enough I have gotten no inspiration during those years. So it's almost like you've got to meet inspiration halfway.

I do not recommend this method of writing to people, but it's the only way I can do it. If I can conceive of an entire story before I write it, it's probably because it's been written 1,000 times and it's not interesting.

You have a busy life. How do you make sure that you are actually in a place where those ideas can come to you?

I try to make space for it, and I learned a lot during the quarantine months or years. How long were we in quarantine again? I don't know. I'm 700 years old now. 

During that time I noticed just how quiet it was outside my house, just how quiet it was when everyone was sleeping until noon, and I practically had a whole work day before anyone woke up. I noticed what I felt like every day when I looked at my calendar and there was nothing on it. For me, that was just absolute bliss. So now, we’ve come out of it and my head's in a blender, but I am trying to create that space for myself every day. When I wake up, I get rid of my children. I run, I sit down and I create that spot of time where I've set boundaries for the people around me, like, "This is my time where I write," and because that time's finite, I usually meet myself there and get it done.

What inspired your latest book, Nora Goes Off Script?

In 2019, I was stuck in bed for a little while and I got hooked on the Hallmark Channel, and I started watching those made-for-TV romance movies. I'd watch one and then another one and then another one, and then I'd think, "Wait, didn't I just see that one? Isn't that the same story, but last time she was a ballet teacher and this time she's selling cupcakes?" It's the same story, and I just got really interested in that, and I started watching until the end when the credits would roll to see who wrote these movies. Was this some super romantic person or were people sitting around a corporate round table in Manhattan trying to just reverse engineer a romance into this format?

And so I started thinking about that person, and that's where Nora Hamilton, my main character, came from. She is a made-for-television romance writer who has spent a decade supporting her horrible husband by writing these movies, and she writes with a degree of detachment and a little bit of eye rolling because she's never really been in love.

And so I thought with a character like that, what if we could run her through that lightning bolt, tingly romance? How would she react to that? 

How was writing your first adult novel after successful YA novels?

The funny thing about your first adult novel when you're 52 years old, is that you're not writing a typical romance novel because you're already grown up. I set out to write this story about these two 40-year-old people who fall in love, and then I put them in a scene together and her children kept walking through the room. They needed a ride, or they needed a sandwich and what ended up happening is I wrote a book about motherhood. 

It's romantic, and that's pretty much the focus of the story, but it's also what happens when you're an adult with children and you fall in love and you've put your whole family at risk. Everybody's heart could get broken when you’ve brought this man into the family. 

I couldn't have written that book 20 years ago. I wouldn't have understood what that was.

What’s the ultimate compliment from a reader?

I just got it this morning. When I write, sometimes if I'm writing something sad, I'll cry, or if something strikes me funny, I'll laugh. I felt so joyful the whole time I was writing it this book. It was the thing I wanted to just run to. I was so joyful about it, and there was a review this morning that said, "This book brought me so much joy," and it’s that feeling when I get a compliment that someone picked up what I was putting down.

How incredible is that, to meet somebody on a page and give them your heart, and it goes right to their heart. To me that's just a miracle.

I can't tell you how heart-wrenching it is when you're misunderstood. And that makes you just have to be so much more careful as a writer. But if you put something out there that you meant a certain way and it's misread, you feel like you just want to drive around the country explaining yourself to people. "I didn't mean it." So it's wonderful when somebody understands what you're trying to say.

As a self-professed late bloomer, what would you say to someone who's been sort of back burner-ing a creative endeavor that's thinking about re-approaching it?

I would say start today, by just stopping berating yourself for not having tried sooner. I hear a lot of, "God, I wish I had done this when I was 30," and I think that you have to appreciate the fact that people grow in the way they grow, and when I was 30 I didn't know anything. I was a hot mess with a two-year-old, and I wasn't ready to do what I'm doing now. So if you're a late bloomer and you're just getting started maybe it's because this is the time to do it. Maybe this is the time when you understand who you are and what you have to offer, and maybe you have a little bit more space than you did 20 years ago. 

I would also say just get started. I've never in my life sat down to write a book, because the whole idea of that just shuts me down. That's too much to do. You sit down to write a scene, or a paragraph, or an email to your friend describing the book you might want to write, and then you write a little more and you just try not to get overwhelmed with what you're trying to do.