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William Norris has taught for Hofstra University, the New School, the College of New Rochelle, and the Gotham Writer’s Workshop in New York City. He has written for Time Out: NY and The Hartford Courant, is the author of Snapshots: A Novel and has published photographs with The Star Ledger, The Associated Press, and Saltwater Sportsman.
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Before I started Snapshots I had never tried to write a novel. The
form seemed daunting, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around its demands or the
level of commitment required to see a novel length work through to completion.
Instead, I wrote short fiction, much of it, in retrospect, not very good short
fiction, and sent my pieces off to journals and magazines without success.
During that time, I wrote four or five stories with the same cast of
characters; a family called the Mahoneys. There were four children, and I had
written pieces narrated by three of them. I begin to envision a collection of
linked stories narrated by each member of the family, but found myself blocked
when I attempted to write a story told by Nora, the youngest member of the clan.
I sat down each writing day, determined to get Nora’s voice right on the page,
but when I read the work over the next morning, it was clear that I wasn’t
even close. Everything I tried felt flat and forced.
Then, one morning in the summer of 1997, I typed, "Nora wakes first and
toddles to the television hulking silently in the living room." It was the
first time I had come at these characters in the third person, and the first
time I had written about ...
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