"In some ways, Urquhart’s writing process seems deliciously mysterious to her. "I never know when I finish one book whether another one is ever going to happen, because it always seems like an act of such unlikely magic, on some level. It’s like a miracle, really, that it happens at all."
Though Urquahart may choose to shroud parts of the writing process in mystery, even from herself, the lyrical confidence of her writing seems like evidence of the thought and care she consistently layers into every book. Her most recent novel, The Stone Carvers, seems a complete example. Urquhart says that, for her, the book is "about the redemptive nature of making art. I always hope that a book will teach me something that I didn’t know that I knew. By the time I’m finished I want to know something I didn’t know when I started." Not art for art’s sake, but at the same time, "it need not be the great big huge work of art either — just making something: just taking experience, reshaping it and reordering it — whether that experience be celebratory or terribly tragic — is redemptive"
When asked,
"Do you have a novel in mind?"
She says,
"Not really. I don’t, actually. I don’t think I will until I can be in one spot for an extended period of time. And then likely something will happen. but there’s no guarantee. I never know when I finish one book whether another one is ever going to happen, because it always seems like an act of such unlikely magic, on some level: it’s like a miracle, really. That it happens at all."
I recommend The Underpainter, The Stone Carvers and Away.
http://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/urquhart.html
