A Conversation With Author Dylan Landis

Dylan Landis is the author of the novel Normal People Don't Live Like This. Her first published book, Normal People Don't Live Like This is a unique collection of stories that tracks the lives of a teenage girl and her mother in New York City during the 1970s.

Landis received praise for the book, which was published in 2009, from major publication reviews including Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, More Magazine and, even closer to home, Washingtonian Magazine.

Landis lives in Washington D.C. and appeared at the this past Saturday. Patch contributor, Garine Isassi caught up with her in the author's tent. A condensed and edited version of that conversation follows. 

Patch: Hello Dylan, I'm very happy to meet you and understand that this is your first novel, even though you've been a writer for a very long time.

Dylan Landis: I was a writer for a very long time. I was a pion, clerk and copy-editor at that New York Times. Then I was a medical editor at the New Orleans Picayune and a home design reporter for the Chicago Tribune. After that, I was a freelance writer. So, I started writing fiction at the age of 40.

Patch: Was that a big transition from writing journalism?

Landis: It doesn't sound like a big transition, but it was enormous. It took me 13 years from when I wrote the first line of fiction to when I actually held the book in my hands. It's a novel in stories. Technically, it's a short story collection, but it's very linked.

Patch: So there is a story line that runs through the different short stories that are in it?

Landis: There is a narrative arc that runs through it. You get the growth of one girl and you also get a sense of her community, her mother, her friends.

Patch: You decided to start writing fiction and you said it was 13 years ago. That's a long time. What did you do during those years to put it all together and how did the book itself come about?

Landis: I was in the middle of writing a series of books on home decorating, called Elegant and Easy Rooms. A friend of mine asked me to take a workshop with her that was taught by Madeleine L'Engle, who wrote “A Wrinkle in Time.”

A lot of women my age grew up on that book. Madeleine said some things in this workshop that really changed my life.

She gave us an exercise where we should all spend thirty minutes writing. She said, “You should spend thirty minutes, then stop.” The idea being that because you know you have to stop, you won't get writer's block. Whereas if she told you just to do the exercise, you could freeze. I not only didn't freeze, but I kept going and going and going, and that became the seed of a novel.

She also told us the story of the Good Samaritan, you know, from the Bible, of this man lying on the road who had been beaten by robbers and then the man who comes along and saves him. She said that scholars argue about which man is Jesus. She said if you can understand that both things could be true -  that man who was beaten and the man who comes along to help him - both could be Jesus at the same time, then you can write fiction. It's like a double way of seeing – the way that two truths can coexist. And I totally got that.

Although I enjoyed writing about design, I always wanted to try something more complicated.

Patch: Was that first book the one you are promoting at the fesitival?

Landis: Actually, no. It was not Normal People Don't Live Like This. That book was a novel that took me five years to write, had four agents who wanted to represent it, who all told me that it would sell at auction and would become a movie, but then no publisher bought.

Patch: So the agents liked it, but the publishers didn't?

Landis: Yes, the agents loved it. The publishers did not. And I was not a writer at that time who wanted to see my rejection letters.

Patch: So, it's a long road?

Landis: Yes, but it was a marvelous journey. I don't look at it like "Oh no, I have this failed novel.” That novel launched me into the life I wanted.

Patch: Do you think that you might go back and retry with that original novel?

Landis: If I were to go back to that novel, I would have to take it down to the foundation. But I got a lot out of that novel. Eight chapters have been published in literary magazines. One of them won a special mention for Pushcart [the prestigious small press award], they list 100 in the back of the Pushcart Collection.

I got a lot from that novel. I learned how to write a novel and how not to write a novel at the same time. Both are true.

Patch: Have you been going to a lot of different book fairs? And how do you like this fair [the Gaithersburg Book Festival] so far?

Landis: I've already gone to one presentation and I was about to go to another. I think this is beautiful. It's beautifully organized.

Patch: What was the process that you took to get into this festival and how did it differ from the other book festivals that you've participated in?

Landis: I get asked. It's absolutely lovely. It's an honor. There was one where I had a friend who made a contact for me, but ordinarily, I get asked. Sometimes you are already known by the festival.

In this case, Gaithersburg reached out to me. I feel like I am great company here at this festival.

Patch: You are considered a local author since you live in Washington.

Landis: Yes, I live in D.C.. They actually asked me last year and I couldn't do it due to an illness in my family. They were kind enough to ask me again. I am so happy to be here. But, I moved to Washington only three years ago. So I'm new to this area and if they consider me a local author, I'm thrilled.

Patch: If you live in Washington, you ARE considered a local author.

Landis: Good. If I can be a local author in just three years, that's great.

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