The Calgary Herald has really well-written interview/article on Diana Gabaldon. It is quite lengthy, so I would suggest reading the entire article, but here are some excerpts below.
She discusses ADHD, her work ethic, the multiple viewpoints that Written in My Own Heart’s Blood is told from, the Battle of Monmouth, and the TV series casting.
There is a little jab at Diana at the end because she said only her and George R.R. Martin are in the position of having their books become TV series. They point out that The Leftovers (HBO) is by Tom Perrotta. I can also think of other series like True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and I am sure there are others.
“Fortunately, I was born with what I think is a benign form of ADHD,” Gabaldon says on the phone from Toronto, the latest stop on her publicity tour promoting her newest book, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood.
“I took a newspaper quiz that was supposed to tell you if you had it or not. The questions fell into two groups. One was all about perception: ‘Do you constantly feel like you are watching a television with eight channels on all at once?’ Yes, doesn’t everybody? ‘Do you feel as if 1,000 things are whizzing past your ears?’ Well, sure. . . .But is it her work ethic? Just the way her brain is wired?
“Probably some of both. I was raised with a very strong work ethic. My dad was the 13th child of a poor New Mexican dirt farmer. Everyone in that family worked like the devil in order to survive and it kind of trickled down,” she says. And while her mother’s family was well off, they also experienced the Depression. “It shows on people who have lived on something like that. My sisters and I are both, not workaholics, but if there is something to be done, we will get it done, no doubt about it.”
She points out that the central portion of the book deals with the Battle of Monmouth, “a huge, messy battle. It went all day. It was the longest battle of the American Revolution. More people died of heat stroke than wounds, but there were a lot of casualties on both sides.” So, it makes sense to have multiple entry points to the battle, from Claire treating the wounded to Jamie commanding untested men to Ian putting his Mohawk-taught scouting skills to use.“So this gives us a stereopticon view of what was going on during the battle. And at the same time it gives us a very accurate sense of how messy and confusing and horrible the whole thing was. I couldn’t have done that if I had just fought it through one guy.”
Source: Calgary Herald
