Beth Greenfield has been working on her debut book, a memoir about the tragic car accident that killed her brother and best friend, for a long time. It takes a long time to put a defining life event into context, into words. The result is the beautiful, simply and skillfully written Ten Minutes From Home, which just came out yesterday. Below, Beth discusses her process as a writer.

Jill Dearman: When did you first start writing about the accident?

Beth Greenfield: I actually started writing about it shortly after it occurred, when I was 12 years old. I got it in my head that I was going to write a book about it, and did so, longhand, on a packet of loose-leaf notebook paper. It was 200 handwritten pages and took me almost a year. The adolescent writing makes me cringe a bit now, but it came in handy, with all of the details that I would've probably forgotten, when I began writing about the accident as an adult, maybe 15 years ago. It would be the topic I'd return to again and again in the many writing workshops I've been enrolled in over the years. But I'd say I became serious about finally turning all of those dribs and drabs into a cohesive book maybe six or so years ago.

JD: Your career as a journalist has thrived over the years. You're an editor at Time Out New York and have written for The New York Times. How has your "day job" helped and/ or hindered you as a creative writer?

BG: It's hindered me time-wise; having deadlines for work that I was getting paid for would always make it easy to justify putting my creative writing on the back burner. So it was crucial for me to actually nab that book deal in order to get it finished! Being a journalist has helped me, though, in that it's boosted my self-esteem as a writer; it's also helped me in approaching the task of writing—to be less afraid of sitting down and actually doing it. I tended to break down the huge book deadline into a series of tiny ones—like a collection of articles almost—and that made it a bit easier to accomplish.

JD: You had a baby while writing this book, how did you juggle writing and motherhood?

BG:I'm still not quite sure! When my daughter Lula was a tiny newborn, I would head out to a cafe for just a couple of hours at a time, cramming in all the writing I could do before my partner would call me home to nurse our baby. Those months are a blur. But I think that, because I'm a journalist who is accustomed to working up against tight deadlines (and because that's the only way I ever get things done!), having such carefully meted out moments to write actually helped me accomplish more. Also, I was not starting from scratch here. I had endless, random files on my computer—of full chapters, partial chapters, and pretty well-developed scenes, so a lot of what I was doing during this time was rewriting and rearranging. Somehow it all came together.
 
JD: Was there any point when you had a "breakthrough" in regards to the WAY to tell this story?

BG: Trying to figure out the way to tell it has always been my biggest hang-up; I kept feeling like there was no story, no tension, and that I had to manufacture something incredibly clever to make it worth reading. I think it was when I realized that I could just tell the story as it happened, beginning to end, but within a short time frame: I had been driving myself crazy trying to figure out how to fit in scenes from high school and college and beyond, and realized at some point that it was all too much, and that the heart of the story was when I was just 12 and 13. I felt like there weren't that many stories out there to focus on this time in one's life, in regard to tragedies, and once I accepted the idea of letting the other periods in my life not be included, there was a big sense of relief.

JD: What are you reading these days?

BG: I just finished another memoir, Imperfect Endings, by my friend Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, which was beautiful, heartbreaking, and funny. Now I'm juggling a new novel, Probation, by Tom Mendicino, about a closeted guy who screws up his marriage after getting caught in a gay roadside tryst; and the non-fiction Dogtown, by Elyssa East, which examines the history of this fascinating Massachusetts ghost town. They're both intriguing in very different ways!

For more on Beth, check out her website, http://www.bethgreenfield.com. And for those in the New York area, you can come hear Beth read from her new book tonight, April 28th at 7pm at the Barnes & Noble on Broadway and 82nd Street.

For more on writerly matters of craft and practice check out my book, Bang the Keys,

or visit the site, http://www.bangthekeys.com

And until next week, I leave you with a question: How do you figure out the timeline for the book or story you are working on?

Jill Dearman is an author, writing coach and editor. She teaches journalism at NYU. For more: www.bangthekeys.com.