An interview with Debra Ginsberg

MB:

What the Heart Remembers is about a woman who has a heart transplant, and then begins to believe that it’s causing her to have the memories of the person to whom it originally belonged. How did you come up with this idea?

DG:
The idea for the story emerged from two different but related concepts that have long been in the back of my mind. For one, I’ve often wonder what it would be like to wake up one day and be someone else. This isn’t a particularly new idea, of course; many novels and films—both comic and dramatic—have been built around this scenario. Then there’s the idea of being two people at once—sort of being inhabited or haunted by another person in some sense. Again, this is a common scenario in fiction of all kinds. But when coupled with the idea of cellular memory (that cells in the body can retain all kinds of information), which has also been an area of interest of mine, the concept of being another person—or at least having part of another person within you—took on a whole new dimension and made, I thought, a good idea for a story. After I did a little research on heart transplants and read some of the anecdotal evidence of cellular memory, I became attached to the story. And then I had to write it.

MB:
The New York Times said “Ginsberg shows a remarkable capacity to inhabit the minds and motives of others”, something I really agree with (and wish I could have articulated as clearly). Is it possible to describe how you manage this? 

DG:
I am fascinated by what makes people tick. Perhaps this comes from so many years of waiting on tables and trying to anticipate what people want or trying to figure out what’s gone on in a people’s lives before they arrived at my table and started yelling at me that their meals weren’t hot/cold/satisfying enough. But perhaps it’s just morbid curiosity. In any event, I am especially interested in what goes on in the minds of people who are very different from me. Why do people put certain bumper stickers on their cars or signs in their lawns? What leads people to commit certain acts—whether those are acts of generosity, hostility, love, or hate? How is it possible for two people of comparable socioeconomic backgrounds to have diametrically opposed worldviews? These are the questions I ask myself often and so I try to create characters that are very different than I am and then get inside their heads. It’s an elaborate way of putting oneself in another person’s shoes, I guess, except I am creating the person. And the shoes. But there is no greater compliment I can receive than when someone tells me I’ve gotten it right.

MB:
Three of your biographical non-fiction books were published before any of your novels. Did you start out writing memoirs and transition to fiction? Which is more fun? 

DG:

Although the first book I published was a memoir (Waiting), I’d always thought of myself as a novelist. In fact, I’d written two novels prior to Waiting that had languished for years in various desk drawers and hard drives. So, really, I started out writing fiction and transitioned to memoir. Waiting wasn’t even the first memoir I wrote, either. I was a good way through Raising Blaze (which was my second published book) when I put it aside in favor of Waiting. In a way, I’ve always been writing memoir. I’ve been jotting down what I saw as annotated observations of the people around me since I was 8 or 9. I never saw these as stories with plots or characters that had to be created—it was all just there for the taking. And in that sense it was easy for me and remained so, to an extent, when I wrote the memoirs. Fiction is more difficult for me to write because one doesn’t have the advantage of ready-made characters and storylines to draw from. The other advantage of writing memoir is that, while there are plenty of universals in every life, one’s own story is unique. Fiction? Not so much. On the other hand, I do love the freedom that writing fiction affords. Where else can you control the course of events? Get rid of people you don’t like? You become the overlord of the world you create. Or, in this case, the overlady.

MB:
You have an amazing variety of talents: writing both fiction and non-fiction, editing, baking cakes and pastries. How do you find the time for all this? 

DG:
First of all, thank you very much. I’ve always been pretty good at time management so that may explain some of it. Also, I think the last time I took a vacation was sometime around the turn of the century, so that may explain some of it too. Writing (and editing) has been my job for some time now and I treat it that way; coming to “work” in my “office” and putting in the time as I would any other job. Unless there’s a special occasion, I usually save the baking for weekends. Although I also work on weekends. So I guess that’s how I find the time…I work all the time.

Debra Ginsberg is the author of the novels The Neighbors Are Watching, The Grift, and Blind Submission.  She lives in San Diego . Visit her website at www.debraginsberg.com.

  






Please stop by Crime Fiction Collective today to read my review of What the Heart Remembers.