Mona Simpson is the bestselling author of seven novels including Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, My Hollywood, Casebook and, most recently, Commitment. Mona studied poetry at Berkley. She got her MFA from Columbia. During grad school, she published her first short stories in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and Mademoiselle. She worked as an editor at The Paris Review for five years. She also teaches at UCLA. She knows the industry from several angles and has worked in it for decades. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about Commitment and writing multiple point-of-view novels. They talk about maintaining momentum in a novel’s middle, bringing bygone eras back to life, breathing life into your characters, playing the role of psychologist as writer, the role of research and much more. In many ways, Commitment might be considered a “what-if” novel. Some aspects bear resemblance to Mona’s life and other aspects are very different. Mona and Marrie also discuss the generative idea of “what-if” novels, how writing one novel sometimes begets another, and other ways to generate ideas for your fiction. For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners. (Recorded on February 9, 2024)  Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)