Unveiling Hidden Secrets: Marty Ross-Dolen’s Quest to Unlock a Daughter’s Haunting Truths
LL: Structure always fascinates and baffles and agonizes me. There are so many possibilities, it’s maddening. Always There, Always Gone is told in five movements, and within each of those sections, each segment is told in short, titled vignettes. I think this really speaks to memory—how it’s stacked and imperfect, but also grief and trauma. Was this structure always so obvious to you, or did it evolve organically?
MRD: The structure of my book took a while to evolve. It didn’t declare itself until I was thick in the writing. I think it’s common while writing a book to get hung up on structure early, but this can risk paralyzing the process, forcing the writer to write to a predetermined outcome rather than being open to discoveries. There are things the burgeoning book knows that the author doesn’t. There are surprises to be had. When I was deep in the writing, I began to see that I had many things to say, many scenes to describe, and many stories to tell, but once I did the saying or describing or telling, I was done. I didn’t want to connect every dot and trail from one paragraph to the next. I wanted to stop with the moment delivered and move onto something else. Ultimately this style of writing spoke to a fragmented structure for my book, and when that became clear to me, the writing flowed even more.
