Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro
Daneile Joyce "Dani" Shapiro is the author of five novels and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion and Devotion. She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and ELLE...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 April 1962
CountryUnited States of America
meditation hours
At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twenty minutes, but the daily practice - simply showing up for it - is centering.
husband book way
Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!
stories
Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories
moving commitment writing
It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward.
pain
Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.
beach rose wish
My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.
disappointment order careers
I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.
notebook feelings pages
When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I'm feeling.
mother religious father
I do strongly identify with being Jewish. I was raised Orthodox and had a childhood complicated by the fact that my father was deeply religious and my mother was not.
nyc quality world
When I was starting out there was no Internet, there wasn't this sense that you could be connected to other writers around the world. And that created a kind of innocence, or parochial quality, even in NYC.
color sick grace
Let me tell you something about hypochondria: It's a pernicious, undermining little demon. It won't kill you, but it will sap the color from your life so that in the loveliest moments, the moments of grace, you are hit with that whisper in your ear that takes it all away. I'm sick, I'm dying - I just don't know it yet.
writing inspire way
Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.
writing practice sitting-down
Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.
world way urban
It's easier in an urban world to cast the blame outward. So I've learned a lot about my own process in that way.