Author Answers with Alison Pace

Alison Pace is this week's author.
She has written "If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend" and "Pug Hill." According to her biography, she calls New York City home and doesn't own a pug herself.

For more about Pace, check out her website or her blog.

WN: How did you become a writer?
PACE: I always felt that I was meant to be a writer. It was always my favorite way to spend time for as far back as I can remember. After working in the art world for about ten years, all the while thinking that what I really should be doing was writing my novel, I finally sat down and started it.

WN: How has your background in art helped you as a writer?
PACE: I think the background in art has helped me a lot. For starters it gave me a lot of material for my first novel. Additionally, studying art and writing about it teaches you to look at things very carefully and to notice all the details. For me, that is such an important part, the most important part, of writing fiction, too.

WN: What’s your writing process like?
PACE: I write mostly during the day. The best way for me is to try to stay at my desk on as close to a nine-to-five schedule as possible. While I'm actually writing a novel, I do tend to jump all over the story and write different sections in a way that is not very linear at all.

WN: What’s the hardest part of writing for you (dialogue, descriptions, etc.?)
PACE: I think the hardest part for me is getting everything else that is going on in life out of my head and sitting down and focusing on the writing, without being tempted by distractions. My characters tend to think more than they speak so I used to struggle more with dialogue, but I think I'm getting better at it. I hope so.

WN: Who is/are your favorite author(s)?
PACE: I love Pam Houston, Elinor Lipman, Ann Patchett, Kate Atkinson, Nick Hornby. I just finished Molly O'Neill's memoir Mostly True, which I thought was wonderful.

WN: How did you feel when you first saw your name on the cover of a book?
PACE: It was a wonderful feeling, a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

WN: If you had to live the life of own of your characters, who would it be and why?
PACE: I would love to be Jane Laine in the second half of If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend. She got to go to so many wonderful places, and she had the most lovely travel companion, too.