I quickly learned that’s impossible because as I’m writing, the characters are coming to life on the page and interacting with the sense of place, and then the characters with other characters, and things happen. With my first novel, I tried to know what it was about at the outset. I know the place, and I’ll have a seed of a character or a very vague sense of what the book is about, but I have no idea where it’s going. In fact, generally the place comes first. SE: Are you a plotter? When you begin writing a book, do you know exactly what the story is going to be?ĭMW: I have no idea where I’m going.

It’s like, “This is the book I wrote, and I’m okay.” I wish I could have done …” But then once I see the galley, it feels finished, and all that doubt about what I should have done evaporates. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, “Oh, I should’ve changed this. I second-guess myself even after I’ve turned in. To see it in galley form, it’s like, “Damn! I did that.” It’s such an experience. Does the release of a new book still bring the same level of excitement as it did the first time around?ĭIANE McKINNEY-WHETSTONE: It’s still exciting to have finally completed a book. SANDRA EBEJER: Our Gen is your seventh novel.

Over a recent Zoom call, McKinney-Whetstone discussed her writing process, the recent surge in book bans, and her advice for aspiring authors. I think it would have been a different novel had it not been for the pandemic, but we were living through this dark time, and I needed some lightness and laughter.” “All of my novels have had these very hefty premises, but this novel started off as fun. “ Our Gen is a bit of a different book for me,” McKinney-Whetstone tells Shondaland.

Told with tenderness, insight, and humor, it is a story that the author says is very much a response to the sociopolitical challenges of the last few years. In Our Gen, she details the lives of four sexagenarian residents of a suburban retirement community who revel in youthful indulgences as they grapple with aging, regret, and long-held secrets. With her new novel, McKinney-Whetstone is taking a different approach. Her sixth book, Lazaretto (published in 2016), was a sprawling epic, tracing the lives of various intertwined characters in post-Civil War Philadelphia. In the 26 years since her debut novel, Tumbling, was published to wide acclaim, she’s become known for detailing the African American experience through rich prose and vibrant characters. Diane McKinney-Whetstone’s writing has been referred to as “remarkable” ( Publishers Weekly), “poetic” ( Booklist), and “compelling” ( Kirkus Reviews).

Diane mckinney whetstone