Nonfiction author and poet Nancy Oelklaus talks about her creative process and the writing of her book, Journey from the Heart, a work that took her almost a decade to write.

How would you describe your creative process while writing this book? Was it stream-of-consciousness writing, or did you first write an outline?

At first the book came in snippets that I wrote in my journal; many of these snippets were poetry. When these snippets started clustering into whole concepts, I consulted a literary agent and laid out the four different directions I was thinking of taking with a book. She said, “Only one of those ideas is marketable.” Of course, I went with that one and worked on the manuscript for about a year when I became utterly convinced there was a second book. So I started that one. Then I had two manuscripts. I’ll never forget the Saturday morning when I awoke to the realization that these two books were merging. I spent most of the day at my computer, cutting and pasting. Words, sentences, whole chapters were flying past me; my memory of that day is a blur. I’ll never know how the two manuscripts came together or how I made the choices I made. But when the day was done, I had a book! 

Were you an avid reader as a child? What type of books did you enjoy reading?

As a child, I was an avid reader of poetry. I loved to sit in my room with my mother’s high school literature book in my lap, reading the poetry out loud. I loved the sound of poetry. Still do. I remember a time in the sixth grade when the teacher read “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes to us. It was one of my favorites, and I knew it by heart. I guess I was moving my lips to the sound of it as the teacher read aloud because she stopped, looked at me, and in astonishment asked, “Do you know this poem by memory?” I did. 

From the moment you conceived the idea for the story, to the published book, how long did it take?

This book took ten years for the total process—about eight years to write, one and a half to edit and find a publisher, and another six to eight months in working with the publisher to bring it to the market.