Meg Gardiner - Gardiner On Writing

Gardiner On Writing

Asked what she considers the most difficult aspect of writing, Gardiner answers, "The first draft. Sketching ideas — 'Somebody is killing Evan's high school class' — is simple. Turning those ideas into compelling scenes is like pulling my own teeth with pliers: slow, painful and messy."

When asked how she knows when a story is right, Gardiner said, "It's right when readers say 'Oh my God' at a plot turn they never saw coming. It's right when they laugh out loud on airplanes, can't sleep until they finish the book, and phone at three a.m. to yell at me for killing a favorite character. But those things don't happen till I've jettisoned half my original ideas, mud-wrestled others into submission, and flayed several drafts of the story to shreds."

Gardiner explained that in her writing, she tries "to explore the boundary between morality and wrongdoing. When is it justified to go outside the law to right a wrong? When can you use ruthless violence to defend somebody you love? Possibly I came to reflect on this issue after an armed robber asked questions about my little girl."

Always plying her trade, Gardiner said, "I observe, take notes and shamelessly, appropriate things my friends and family say and do. I'm also a news junkie. The problem with that is that all headlines start to look like story material. I see 'Volcanic Vent Plunge' and think, wild. Gotta be a great story. Until I read that a California ski patrol died falling into that volcanic vent. Then I know it's time to back off and read as a human being."

Gardiner considers no subject taboo. "No subject should be off-limits. That road leads to timidity and repression. However, I think certain approaches to subjects are repulsive. Gratuitous, protracted, explicit violence is sometimes offered as a feast, and portrayed with such lurid and eager detail that it becomes almost pornographic. But we should argue about such approaches, not forbid them."

Gardiner insists that being an attorney helped her success a great deal. "The intellectual rigor prepared me for a lot of things. The grounding in legal knowledge has been helpful in practice, in teaching, and in being a writer. I learned not to write in legalese. I learned how to tell a story and take a position."

But when asked if she has any plans to return to law practice, Gardiner quickly replies: "Nope. I've escaped and they'd have to catch me. But that is a measure of my satisfaction with the career I now have rather than a distaste for the law."