When I was in Oxford, England, visiting my daughter who was studying there, I looked up into the beams of Merton Chapel and there was a face peering down at me. It was a face with leaves sprouting as hair, vines and tendrils springing from his mouth and nose. I had come to face to with an ancient carving of a Greenman. Greenman have been found in churches in the British Isles since the 12th century and they've been in existence in different forms in many countries for much longer than that. My response as a writer was to ask what if? What would it be like if my hair suddenly turned to leaves, my skin became as rough and fluted as sycamore bark, and vines pushed their way up my throat? My musings turned into a poem, The Greenman, which was published in several journals and anthologies.

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"Write what you know."

How many times as writers have we been told just that? I think it might even be in the initiation packet along with instructions on the secret handshake. But there's no denying that it's a technique that works. Especially for a first book. It gives you a level of comfort that allows you as the writer, the freedom to allow your story to come to life. So for my debut novel for MTV Books, I did just that -- wrote what I knew.

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Write a Novel is "a form of open courseware," says the website's creator. His goal is to "give you some basic information on topics related to writing fiction in general and a novel in particular." The site includes 18 downloadable guides that discuss everything from story synopsis to plotting to writing habits. Wondering what comes after, "It was a dark and stormy night?" This site can help you. (And help you write a better open!)

I began writing Jump at the Sun in early spring 2001. Or wait -- maybe it was late spring 2001. Or maybe it was the fall. The truth is, I don't remember. I don't remember much about that time. The whole thing, frankly, is a hazy blur.

It's a blur because my daughter was two years old and my son was six months and we had just moved from New York to Boston so my husband could take a new job. I was alone in a new city (actually worse, a new suburb) with small children and no friends and no job and no family and I was starting, seriously, to question the whole thing. Boston. (Still questioning that one). Wifedom. Motherhood.

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For a long time the idea was only a doodle in my notebook. "Happy families," wrote Tolstoy, "are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Why, I wondered, do so many intelligent people cite that line... without ever seeming to question whether it's true? Do we honestly agree with Tolstoy that only tragedy is interesting... that happiness is boring, cliché? And if so, what does this say about our own expectations and dreams? Is our choice really between being interestingly tragic, or else being automatons of contentment? Or can happiness be quirky, hilarious, deeply challenging?

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My inspiration for The Keep happened in a single moment--or really, more like a single hour. I'd just finished my previous novel, Look at Me, and was wondering what I would work on next. I'd also just had my first son, and my husband and I had taken our eight-week-old baby to Charleville France, where my husband was directing a play. It was an ill-starred trip (I ended up having to return early because of a serious illness in my family), and we ended up having only one day of leisure together. We spent it driving around in Belgium, and our travels included the town of Bouillon, named after Godfrey de Bouillon, who led the first crusade. Godfrey's ruined castle still stands on a tall hill overlooking the town, and we took the obligatory tour, my husband carrying our baby in a pouch on his chest.

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