“I work all the time! Seriously. I’m at my computer usually 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and sometimes more, because I want to be. I love love love to work.”
Pam Redmond, interview with bookreporter.com
One of the most amazing things about writing is the mysterious way in which an idea or an image can transform itself into a story. I just love learning about how this works for an author I enjoy reading. That’s why it was so fascinating to find out how Pamela Redmond came to write her wonderful new novel, The Possibility of You — and how her story reshaped itself along the way.
The Possibility of You spans 100 years through the eyes of three very different, but appealing characters: Cait, Billie, and Bridget. Crafting a story of this scope was a big departure for Pam, who’s built a loyal following for her lighter, contemporary fiction. She was inspired to write her novel when she began searching for information about her grandmother, Bridget, who immigrated to New York City from Ireland at the turn of the century. Imagining Bridget’s struggles and looking at her own daughter’s life as a young adult, Pam began wondering about her grandmother and the choices she had made.
Ultimately, her musings sent Pam on a long and rich journey — and motivated her to switch literary gears and write a many-layered historical novel that explores timeless themes of womanhood, motherhood, love and loss.
The Possibility of You took Pam five years to finish, in part because of all the research she did about New York City, the early battle for reproductive rights, and adoption. But her book also had a long birthing cycle because Pam had several false starts until she came up with a structure supple enough to weave the stories of her three main female characters together. Ah, structure! So important, yet so elusive!
Originally, there were only two main characters, but Pam found this didn’t give enough depth to her tale, so she decided to create a third woman whose contemporary story framed and intersected with the other two. This complex, but fulfilling framework allowed her to explore the way in which motherhood and other universal aspects of women’s lives were reinterpreted over time. The result is a heart-warming, engaging tale of love, loss, and longing. For more on The Possibility of You and Pam’s writing process, check out pamelaredmond.com. Bravo, Pam. Write on!
