People often asked me how my stories are born.
I always suspect them to hope for a reassuring answer.
I’m sorry to disappoint you.
Stories, here, are not born from ideas, nor outlines.
They are born from my nightmares.
Not those that make you scream and wake up in the middle of the night. No. I mean the others.
The quiet, persistent ones.
Those who take up all the space and pat me on the shoulder.
I usually let them stay for a few nights.
I pretend not to see them.
I make tea and Mr. The Cat watches me closely, with the look that clearly means:
“You know perfectly well this isn’t going away, Annette. So what’s the point of acting tough?”
And it is right. As usual.
Here, characters arrive before the story.
They are already there, standing in the corridor, sometimes sitting on my bed.
They don’t give me their names right away.
They don’t explain to me what they want.
They wait for me to understand on my own.
One might think I write to understand my nightmares. But that’s not true.
I write to give them an acceptable shape, so they stop knocking from the inside.
In this manor, a book is finished when it no longer insists.
When it stops coming back to whisper in my ear at night.
When it allows me to sleep. Or at least to negotiate.
Happy endings aren’t a priority here.
Honest endings, however, are.
I never promise that everything will be fine.
I only promise that nothing is placed there by accident.
As for the Lollipop version…
People often believe it softens things.
But that’s a mistake.
It removes nothing. It filters.
It lets through what can be read without losing one’s way.
And keeps the rest to the imagination.
If you have stumbled upon one of my books, it’s probably not by chance.
But it’s not an urgent invitation either.
Take your time.
Look around.
If something unsettles you, just a little, then it’s most likely where it belongs. Mr. The Cat approves this message.
It is currently sleeping on the manuscript.
That’s usually a good sign.