Writing The Effects of Light

The first thing I heard was Pru's voice. Though the three years in which I wrote The Effects of Light were filled with hard work, that first dawning of the book, that first pinprick of it, came easily. It was remarkable and out of the blue: one day I awoke to the high, clear voice of a little girl ringing in my ear. When I look back at the spring of 2001, I see Prudence May Wolfe next to me, insistently tapping on my shoulder.

It should be noted that prior to her visit, I had not written a word for three years. I had written a novel-in-verse as my undergraduate thesis while at Vassar College. But upon moving to New York in 1998, I became more interested in the trappings of my young adult life—an apartment, a steady paycheck, a social life. I don't think I believed I could be a writer and have all that too.

So I was very surprised when Pru started to invade my life. Soon I became kind of obsessed with her—other writers I've met since have assured me this is perfectly normal—and began to write down what she was telling me. I learned as I listened that Pru had an urgent story she needed to get into the world. As I got to know her, I learned that something terrible had happened to her. So, thinking I had a choice, I decided I would not write her story at all. I told myself that I was not going to write another book about a terrible thing that happens to a little girl. So I tried to put her to rest.

But, as I said, Prudence was tapping at my shoulder. She showed up in dreams. She whispered in my ear. As I tried to ignore her, her voice only got louder. I started to see that it was not simply Pru's story I was being asked to tell. Beyond her, I saw Myla Rose Wolfe, her elder sister, left behind by the tragedy of Pru's death. I heard the voice of David, their idealistic, widowed professor of a father. And I saw the photographs made by Ruth, the artist who turned her camera's lens onto the rich, imaginative lives of the Wolfe sisters. I saw that these photographs were integral in the life of this family; that they enriched and challenged the lives of these girls.

As a subject of fine arts photographs myself, I believe that Americans have a wrongheaded fear of the body. In our Puritan society, we have an almost impossible time separating nudity from sexuality. I believe that photographs like the ones taken of Myla and Pru—conceived in innocence, and depicting children as they are—are important and good. But I wondered: would I still believe that if the worst possible thing imaginable happened because such photographs existed? Would the death of a child change my mind?

As you can see, ignoring Pru's voice had the opposite effect than the one I'd planned; suddenly I was waist deep in this other world, in this other family, and the only way to get back to myself was to write. It was bliss and it was torture. It took me eight months to write the first draft, and another three years to find an agent, a publisher, do four major revisions, and, ultimately, wait.

Over the course of that long period of time, when the flush of glory had subsided, I began to wonder what I was doing with myself. As a child, I'd been a fiercely committed actor who loved the theater. Sure, I loved the thrum of Shakespeare's language, and I adored the soaring terror of stepping on stage, but what I loved most of all was the community of it. As I wrote The Effects of Light, I'd look up occasionally and wonder what the heck I was doing, alone in a room, hearing voices. Sure, it felt like a community, but all these people I was talking to and working with every day actually lived inside my own head.

I did not read The Effects of Light for the year before it came out. I began to write something new, and, in doing so, to try to learn how I write books, a task I hope to take on for the rest of my life. On a surreal day in early January, a box carrying ten hardcover books, written by me (!), arrived on my doorstep. I sat down and read The Effects of Light as though it was for the first time. Yes, there were things I wished I'd written a little differently, but I was excited. Suddenly, I saw what I had been hoping to build: a community. And I realized that the community was made up not just of the characters in the book, but of all of you, those who would read the novel. I was excited for the people who would find this family on their own and come to love them. The work came alive again for the first time in months. I saw the Wolfe family devastated and struggling and loving, and felt a skip of hope that they would move all of you, as they've moved me.

You see, there's something I haven't told you. In the middle of that initial flush of writing, my city was attacked. I watched the second plane hit the Towers from my street corner, and saw the collapse of those mighty constructions from the roof of my home in Brooklyn. In the subsequent days of fear, of sorrow, of smoke covering my home, I believed I had no right to write my book. I had no right to make art in the midst of all this reality. Someone very wise, someone I was smart enough to marry, told me that I was wrong. "Your book," he said, "is about how art transforms us, brings us out of our human tragedies, and lifts us up. There is nothing more vital than that." He told me it would feel lonely to write, that it would feel selfish and hard and unimportant, but that if I listened to the Wolfes and told their story, I might be able to help expand the world in the best way art can, at a moment in which the world seemed to be becoming terribly small-minded. As long as art can do this for us, can stretch us, then I want to make it. I will see hope in its creation, even in the darkest of days. Art brings us home, to our best place. Thank you for reading.