The Quality of Life Report

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The Quality of Life Report Page 33

by Meghan Daum


  You are currently working on the screenplay to your novel. What is the biggest challenge in adapting this story and character to a visual medium?

  Writing the screenplay was a greater pleasure than I ever could have imagined. Obviously, the novel has a lot of characters, and sadly, many of them had to be eliminated in the interest of writing a movie that wouldn’t necessarily be five hours long. So there were some Sophie’s Choice moments with some of the townspeople of Prairie City. But I think that the story and, moreover, the essence and tone of the novel are very much intact in the script, and I feel tremendously lucky to have been able to write it.

  Besides the screenplay, are you working on any other writing projects?

  I spend most of my waking hours messing around in my head with a set of characters who I think will populate a new novel. The way I generally write is that I mull the idea over and over again in my mind until it’s time to start writing it. Then I write nonstop for months. That writing period is a time I both yearn for and dread, because it’s a bit akin to hysteria, but I think it may be approaching. I’d better warn my friends now.

  A Note on the Author

  Meghan Daum is the author of three other books: The Unspeakable and Other Subjects of Discussion, which won the 2015 PEN Center USA Award for creative nonfiction; My Misspent Youth: Essays; and Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House. She also edited the New York Times best-seller Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids.

 

 

 


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