What Keeps Lionel Shriver Up at Night | Big Think

What Keeps Lionel Shriver Up at Night

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The author stays up trying to figuring out where to position her writing desk, and solves many of her fictional questions in her sleep.

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Lionel Shriver:

Lionel Shriver's latest novel, "So Much for That," was published in March 2010. Other novels include the New York Times bestseller "The Post-Birthday World" and the international bestseller "We Need to Talk About Kevin," which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Earlier books include "Double Fault," "A Perfectly Good Family," and "Checker and the Derailleurs." Her novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She lives in London.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What keeps you up at night?

Lionel Shriver: You know, that’s funny. This sounds so petty. But, what kept me up last night was, I just moved house in London and my study is just a pile of cartons and I’m tortured where to put the desk. So, last night I was rearranging furniture in my head. So, it goes from the mundanities like that. Actually most writers would probably not see that as mundane. The orientation of a desk is bizarrely important.

Otherwise, I don’t know. The state of my marriage if I recently had a fight, or what to do in chapter three. I solve a lot of fictional questions in my sleep. That is, I’ll go to sleep thinking about something and wake up with the answer. I find dreams and the state of unconsciousness very creatively useful.

Recorded on March 12, 2010