The speaker learned a valuable lesson about writing and human nature while working on their tenth book, 'Inheritance'. Initially starting from a shocked and traumatized state, they realized upon revisiting the manuscript after a break that they had been writing from a present moment rather than from trauma. This experience led them to believe that only poets can write directly from trauma, drawing on the insights of psychiatrist Bessel Vander Kolk regarding trauma.
Novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro talks to Debbie Millman about her surprising genetic inheritance.