Author Saralee Rosenberg Visits Syosset Library

Saralee Rosenberg, author of four novels including the most recent Dear Neighbor Drop Dead, made a special appearance at on Thursday, June 9 to talk about what it’s like to be a writer and the writing process.

“I just make stuff up and hope it flies,”Rosenberg said in front of a crowd about twenty.

Rosenberg admits that her best work comes from questions that scare her and keep her up at night, as well as questioning why people do certain things.

Though Rosenberg writes primarily for women, she has a lot of male readers. She gets emails from men who admit that they start to read her books after finding their wives laughing out loud while reading.

Her stories are inspired by news articles as well as facts she hears from friends and events. Then with that information Rosenberg creates a whole world surrounding it. Her goal is to write honest portrayals and discussions within the characters in her books.

Easily comfortable around a crowd and down to earth, Rosenberg jokes that writing is like driving in a car with a man.

"They have no directions, there is no stopping for help but eventually he gets to his destination," Rosenberg said.

At the beginning steps of writing a manuscript Rosenberg not only envisions the characters she working with but the audience she’s trying to reach too. She doesn’t ask what the book is going to be about, but rather who. Whoever the character she creates is, Rosenberg will write their whole biography and then flushes out the characters that are involved in the main characters life.

Usually she said she doesn’t know what she’s writing about at the beginning of a project. Writers, Rosenberg said, aren’t in complete control when they write.

"They think they are but in reality around page fifty the characters take the reins," Rosenberg said.

Dear Neighbor, Drop Dead was written over ten years and previously titled All in the Cards. The original book took three years to write and she took another year to find an agent. Though the agent thought they had a buyer, the deal fell through.

Rosenberg said she became bored with the first book so she decided to rewrite the whole thing. She wanted to change it up since, the years after writing the book, the world itself changed. In the revision she changed what the characters went through and focused more on their expectations.

Currently Rosenberg is brewing up an idea for a manuscript. The title will be All on Her Plate and it’s about a woman with Anorexia. She is also working on a middle-grade book called Hannah’s Help Hotline.