Mary Higgins Clark, on becoming a writer

You asked about the first book that inspired me to write and why.

I wasn’t inspired to write.  I was writing from the time I was 6 years old and could put two sentences together.

I have always maintained that at our cradles, the legendary Godmothers visit each one of us and leave a gift.  The one who might have given me the voice of an angel was out of town.  The one who might have made me dance like Ginger Rogers did not show up.  I have absolutely no ability to thread a needle or sew a button.  My daughters remind me that the hems of their school uniforms were scotch taped and they were entirely accurate.

I raised and fed five children and not one of them was malnourished but no one ever begged an invitation to my dinner table.

The one Godmother who showed up whispered – “I give you the gift of being a storyteller.”  I am so happy she came that evening.

From the time I was six I was in love with reading as well as writing.  I loved mysteries.  I started with Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton and moved on to Agatha Christie, Mignon Eberhardt and Josephine Tey, to name a few.

Even as a child I wanted desperately to be the first reader to know ‘who done it’.  I did not realize I was teaching myself to write suspense.  “This is a clue I would tell myself – this doesn’t mean anything but sounds like a clue.” That was why, after my first book, Mount Vernon Love Story, an historical novel about George and Martha Washington, was published in 1969 to good reviews and no sales, I looked over the shelves of my library and realized that my favorite reading was in the suspense field.  I decided that I could understand why the authors I just named were so successful, and why I had to struggle through the books by other authors because I didn’t care if the butler did it.  He usually did.

I took a short story writing course when I was 22 years old right after I was married because I was desperate to learn how to be a successful writer.  The professor said, “Take a real life story that has fascinated you – maybe it’s a family secret; maybe something you read in a newspaper or magazine.  Ask yourself two questions – ‘suppose’ and ‘what if’ and turn into fiction that true incident”.  I have written 42 books with that structure as a building block.  I added one question of my own - ‘why’.  Because if three or four people might have had the opportunity and motive to commit a crime, only one would have gone over the edge and taken another one’s life.  His or her motive was the strongest and most compelling.

The Lost Years was initially a great challenge.  My editor of 37 years, Michael Korda, suggested that I write a book with a biblical background – a letter that Christ may have written to someone.  My response was, “Michael that could be considered irreverent, if not sacrilegious.”  A letter from Christ against the background of a murder seemed crazy, but I found I was drawn to the concept.

Christ was a religious Jewish boy who went to the temple three times a day to study.  At age 12 he was teaching the elders in the temple of Jerusalem over Passover and astounded them with his wisdom of the scriptures.  Obviously he could both read and write.  Another example is when he traced names in the dirt and saved the life of the adulteress.  Then I asked myself – “To whom would he have written this parchment?”

On Palm Sunday one of the Psalms gave me the answer.  ‘Then Joseph of Arimathea, a good and just man and a secret disciple of Christ had the courage to go to Pontius Pilate and ask for the body of the crucified Christ to lay in his own tomb.’  I thought it not unlikely that Christ, foreseeing his death, may have written to Joseph and that is how the story began.

I am in the final pages of Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting as I write this on December 18, 2012.  I will be turning the final chapter in within the next few days.  I thoroughly enjoyed writing the book but it is always the same.  I know who did it and why but the journey, from the first page to the last, is one I undertake with the reader.

My chapters are not neatly laid out with what is going to happen in them.  Only the main characters have identified themselves to me.  We walk through a narrow path in the forest together and have a lot of fun in the process.

Toward the end of the time when it is completed, my publisher is calling every day – waiting for those final pages.  Well, they’re ready now and I hope you do enjoy Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting.