Table of Contents: From Breakfast With Anita Diamant to Dessert With James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings and Insights From Today's Bestselling Authors (27 page)

Victoria Will

SELECTED WORKS

Over You
(2011)

Nanny Returns
(2009)

The Real Real
(2009)

Dedication
(2007)

Citizen Girl
(2004)

The Nanny Diaries
(2002)

Inspiration
We have lunch together every day before we start working and we chew over the topics of the day, paying special attention to angles of stories that aren't being addressed. For example, in 2000 we were obsessed that endless stories were running in New York City media about how hard it was for the newly rich to find decent household help, but the help was never interviewed for these reports. So if there's a side of the story that is being underserved, we'll puzzle over that. We often have “a-ha” moments, when one of us will crystallize one of the topics we've been mulling over into a story. Then Nicki gets teary and the hair on Emma's neck stands on end and we know we've found our next book.

The Joy of Working with Friends
It's hard for us to believe, but this will be our tenth year of writing collaboratively and
Nanny Returns
is our fifth published novel. A few interesting facts about our partnership:

1. We have date night.
When in the phase of generating a first draft we try to see each other once a week for a movie or the theater. We always get that delicious high school feeling like it's been FOREVER since we hung out, even though we've talked a minimum of five times on the phone that day. And we won't even count the e-mails.

2. We have codependent food fixations.
When on tour, one of us will invariably say, “Ooo, do you think they'll have _____ here?” (Fill in the blank with some random local treat.) Invariably “they” will not, and neither will the local diner, bakery, or supermarket. Cut to us trying to construct key lime pie/peanut butter cupcake/baked Alaska from an assortment of over priced stale goods out of a mini bar fridge.

3. We believe in the Law of Attraction
. Call it what you will — the power of intention, cognitive behavioral therapy, if you build it he will come - but after a decade of partnership we've learned that holding a positive vision is job criteria numero uno.

Readers Frequently Ask
Describe the writing process you have developed.

We actually stumbled onto a process with our first novel (The Nanny Diaries) and, while we have gone on to hone and refine it over the past decade, it has essentially remained the same. Once we have the seed of an idea, we spend several weeks outlining the core elements of the story: primary and periphery characters, each of their arcs, A and B plots, and timeframe. We then break this outline into scenes, each take separate scenes, go off to our own homes and generate them, e-mail them to each other, edit them for each other, and then string them into one document. Once we have this first draft, we sit together and go over it line by line on the computer, on paper, and frequently out loud, until it is ready to go to print. And of course, our editor gets to weigh in at multiple junctures along the way.

How have your lives changed since
The Nanny Diaries
became a movie?

Our lives actually changed the most when the book came out, in that its unexpected success allowed us to leave our “day jobs” and begin to write full time. This is a huge blessing anywhere, but particularly when you live in New York City. Then the working from home thing allowed us to get dogs, who are spectacular. They keep us getting up from the computer and are our mostly companions, to quote Kay Thompson's
Eloise
. When the movie came out our lives changed in that we had the thrill of watching artists we had enormous respect for give life to this story we had written side by side on Nicki's Mac with a package of Oreos. It remains a completely surreal experience for which we are thoroughly grateful.

Influences on Our Writing
David Sedaris's
Santaland Diaries
was a HUGE influence on us because it was a fresh way of talking about the workplace, with a blend of biting sardonic humor and pathos that resonated with us and helped to inform the voice of Nan, the heroine of
The Nanny Diaries
and
Nanny Returns
. We were also inspired by the naturalistic style of his voice, which made you feel like you were being told a crazy story by your favorite story-teller friend. It had an intimacy and immediacy. It gave us the courage to try writing in our own voices, to capture our story in the rhythms we would tell it to a friend over drinks. We played with stringing words together, italics and capitalization to capture the feeling of a moment — a technique that drove our copy editors crazy but has since been adopted by other writers in our genre.

Makes 8 servings

We found each other at an ATM machine on East 86th Street, slurping the sort of triple caramel something-iattos that could put a girl in a sugar coma until she's retired. We promptly discovered that not only were we both students at NYU, but we were both nannies! And our mad passionate overnight friendship was off and running. Emma's “gig” required her to cook three different three-course dinners a night (macrobiotic for the wife, child-friendly for her charge, and comfort food for the soon-to-be divorced husband) in a galley kitchen with a four-burner stove and no microwave. She did not, however, know a thing about baking, as her employers miraculously didn't “believe” in dessert. Nicki, meanwhile, had managed to dodge elaborate chef responsibilities,
but
had developed the nasty habit of drowning her nannying sorrows in prodigious after hours baking, everything from Krispie treats to a dacquoise, depending on how harrowing the day. Joining forces, we discovered we could throw one heck of a dinner party. In college, boys' behavior is not so far from toddlers' when it comes to social gatherings, so this was a particularly good fit. It was the summer of '95, with record-breaking heat in Manhattan. We'd crack open the vodka, throw in a few ice cubes, and set the oven to preheat.

Five years later we sat down to imagine
The Nanny Diaries
. We were no longer nannies but not yet writers, and we had joined the working drones that ordered in pizza or met each other for cheap sushi. Emma had developed post-traumatic stress from her nanny/chef past and ignored her closet-sized kitchen. Nicki had taken on the gym and her glycemic index and stored shoes in her oven. Clutching mugs in various coffee shops, we imagined the character of Nan's Grandma to represent wealth done right. Grandma is someone who has all the resources that the villains, the X family, also have, at her disposal, and yet she chooses to live a passionate, engaged life. Grandma would support our thesis by showing that it isn't wealth that rotted the Xs, it's the values that informed what they did with it.

We recently wrote the novel's sequel,
Nanny Returns
, which fictionally kicks off twelve years later. Much like our heroine, we, too, are now married and starting families of our own. We have finally learned kitchen moderation. Nicki is still the baker and Emma still the chef and our ovens are getting regular use in the manner in which they were intended. Grandma has once again taken on her life with gusto and we imagine her hosting a reunion for Nan and her college friends, topping off the evening with an elegant and luscious plum tart — Emma's favorite from Nicki's repertoire. May it bring your book group a delicious discussion!