The author of four novels, Ruth Ozeki is also a Buddhist priest and filmmaker. Her books have won the Kiriyama Prize, a South Asian literary prize, and an American Book Award, and in 2013 her latest novel, "A Tale for the Time Being," was short-listed for Great Britain's Man Booker Prize. (Ozeki lives part-time in Canada and part-time in the United States.)
"A Tale for the Time Being" is a two-track story, told partly through the diary of a teenage girl in Japan, and partly by a woman in British Columbia who finds the diary washed up on the shore after the tsunami. In its review, the New York Times called it "delightful and harrowing." Ozeki will be at Common Good Books in St. Paul on Monday.
In this interview, Ozeki explains why wrist cuffs are crucial, and why her writing room is more interior than exterior.
Q: Describe your writing room.
A: It's a small but spacious room in my mind, very quiet and far away, and often difficult to get to. There are certain keys that fit the many doorways between here and there, but I'm often unsure of which keys to use, and I often lose or misplace them. But once I'm inside the room, I feel like I've come home. The room is quiet and still, but it is not restful. It's filled with a generative tension that animates the air, which is alive and shimmering with hope and possibility. I haven't been back there for several years now. The last time I was there for any length of time was in the fall of 2011, when I was finishing "A Tale for the Time Being." I miss it terribly.
Q: What is your writing strategy — do you have rituals that you maintain?
A: It depends on what I'm writing. When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.
Q: How do you get past writers' block (or the distraction of the Internet)?
