Are you a writer who needs some quiet time, away from the distractions of the world, to allow your imagination to roam?
Hop in the pool.
That’s something Madison author David McGlynn has learned. A lifelong swimmer, the author of the new novel “Everything We Could Do” values his time in the water. (It’s also literally given him inspiration – he’s finished another nonfiction book on the history of people swimming the English Channel.)
“You can't have your phone, you can't have your computer, you can't have anything but your own thoughts,” McGlynn said in a recent phone interview. “And that meditative place is where I feel like my imagination is in some ways the most active. You remember things people said. You think about things. And then ultimately it gives way to storytelling.”
Drawing From Real Life
“Everything,” which went on sale Monday from Northwestern University Press, is a work of fiction, but was inspired in part by McGlynn’s memories of the few days he spent in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) after his second son was born premature. His son ended up being fine, but “Everything” is about the bond developments between a veteran nurse and a mother who has delivered premature quadruplets.
“I knew I wanted to tell this story as fiction, because I didn’t want it to be autobiographical,” he said. “I wanted it to be about people that I could amplify. I could take them down dark roads. I could test, in the way that a novel often can, how people will respond to things that I wouldn’t be able to respond to myself.”
‘We Grow Closer To Each Other’
There are very few works of fiction set in the emotionally charged world of parents dealing with infants who are having health struggles. One of the most famous, coincidentally, was by a former Madison writer, Lorrie Moore, whose 1997 story “People Like That Are The Only People Here” is one of her best-known works.
McGlynn said he understands why writers might want to shy away from the topic, and why readers (especially parents) might not want to think about it. Most stories, fictional and non-fictional, set in hospitals are told from the perspective of physicians or patients – not the helpless parents in the waiting room.
But that left him with some rich and largely unexplored dramatic territory to explore. (He also made sure to infuse the serious subject matter of his novel with humor, and promises a “big, bold redemptive ending” for the reader.)
“The NICU is something that can leave families so affected. And it never gets talked about,” McGlynn said “And I’ve become someone who feels like the more we talk about the things that affect us, the more we can understand them, heal from them. Tragedy is an act of sympathy. You go through the feelings in order to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s terrible position.
“That helps us. In a way, we grow closer to each other.”
