GBF Author Q&A with... Rachel Machacek

Name: Rachel Machacek
Book: The Science of Single: One Woman's Grand Experiment in Modern Dating, Creating Chemistry, and Finding Love

Rachel's Website

Where do you find inspiration?
My life, people waiting for public transportation, nature, old battered ladies in colorful muu muus, my co-worker who starts sentences with things like "Back when God was a baby..." and "Mumma always said..."

What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
As Yoda said, Do, or do not. There is no try. So, write. Write a lot. (For free if you have to in order to get started.) Read. Read a lot. Stop worrying about the how other people write and how organized their process is compared to yours. Be consistent. Be honest and willing to throw your heart on the plate for people to feast on. Get a cat or a dog. It's nice to have something soft to pet when you want to stab your eyeballs out from staring at a blank screen or when you've written so deep into the heart of the matter you're bawling your eyes out.

What are you reading now?
Ya know, I used to be a one book at a time kinda girl. Not anymore. I'm mostly done with Steve Almond's "This Won't Take But a Minute Honey" (required reading for writers by the way), "The History of Love," a deep backlog of New Yorkers and I just picked up "My Antonia" again after many, many moons.

What's your favorite opening line?
Of all the unfair questions. How about: "The Swede." American Pastoral.

What book has inspired or affected you in some way?
Besides "Superfudge," which I read 15 times when I was eight years old? "Jitterbug Perfume" has had a strange reaching affect on my life. Because of this book, which I read back in college, I've been trying to like beets. (The beet is a central character in the book - perhaps even the hero.) It's been about 17 years. I'm just about there.

If you could sit down at dinner with 3 other authors living or dead, which three?
I have four. Sorry.

• Jack Keroac so we could discuss the way he used "first thought, best thought" in writing.
• Anne Lamott so maybe a smidgen of her magic would rub off on me. (And to thank her because "Bird By Bird" was the only thing getting me through writing my book at times.)
• Haruki Murakami so he could teach me something about writing so my readers can feel every nook of their hearts.
• Steve Almond because he's new to me (thanks to Eleanor Brown) and I have an enormous writing crush on him.