The Quality of Life Report

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.