Our Book of the Month is The One That I Want by Allison Winn Scotch

Allison Winn Scotch is the best-selling author of Time of My Life and The Department of Lost and Found. In her latest novel, The One That I Want, she asks, What happens if you think your life is great - only to discover that it's all been a facade?

CommitmentNow.com:  The One That I Want has a very interesting premise:  a woman, whose adult life has been carefully controlled, is given “the gift of clarity” which allows her to see into her own future where she witnesses events that surprise – and sometimes sadden - her.  How did you come up with this idea?

Allison Winn Scotch:  The roots of this book actually grew from my last book, Time of My Life, in which a pretty discontent woman goes back to her past to try to fix where she’s gone off-course. I wanted to take that premise and flip it on its head…and see if I could pull it off. What happens if you think you have a great life, and then you discover that it’s more or less a total façade? How do you recover from that reveal? Can you recover from that reveal?

CommitmentNow.com:  In The One That I Want, Tilly learns that she has often avoided seeing things that were right in front of her.  Do you think many women, either consciously or not, fail to see the obvious for fear of the pain that might result?

Allison:  Without a doubt, including yours truly. I was certainly guilty of this in a lot of my former relationships – from an outside view (and in hindsight) the problems were pretty obvious, but when you’re mucking your way through, and you’ve invested so much time and energy and love, it’s hard to realize that sometimes, there are problems that can’t be solved. Or that sometimes, you can’t create a “perfect” life: something has to give, and guess what? That’s okay. Like it or not, life is sometimes about stepping back and conceding pretty huge compromises.

CommitmentNow.com:  The Tilly Farmer at the beginning of your novel is not the same Tilly Farmer at the end.  Were you surprised at how much Tilly changed or did you plan that prior to beginning The One that I Want?

Allison:  Thank you for saying this because that really was the struggle of getting this novel right. It went through six or seven drafts because no, I didn’t know how much she’d change, and to be honest, initially, I wasn’t sure how to change her. I write without a map, without the end in mind or predetermined, and because she is a character that I didn’t have much in common with, I really wasn’t sure of what her reactions would be to a lot of what comes her way. As a result, she was fairly passive – too passive – for the first few drafts. It wasn’t until I realized that she needed to get angry, that any human being would be pretty pissed off about everything that was happening, that she made her real transformation. And I love her at the end. I really admired who she grew into.

CommitmentNow.com:  The One That I Want is your third novel.  When did you first start writing?

Allison:  If you look at my journals that my parents dumped at my house when the moved, you could say that I started writing at about age six! But professionally, I started writing about a decade-ago, in my mid-20s, first as a freelance copy writer, then I segued into magazines, and finally, I wrote my first novel about four years ago. Wow! That seems kind of crazy to say. Time has flown by.

CommitmentNow.com:  Your prior two novels, Time of My Life and The Department of Lost and Found were both very popular!  What is the key to writing fiction that appeals to so many women?

Allison:  Thank you! I think the key, at least what I hear from readers, is to write honestly about life, and what that means for me is that my characters have to have resonant traits and emotions and situations. Of course, no one can go back in time or see into the future, but A LOT of women have wondered about their what-ifs, and if it meant that I had to expose a bit of who I was and my own what-ifs to create a fully-fleshed out heroine, then that’s what I was going to do. I try not to shy away from tackling difficult subjects or even unlikable characters because we have to deal with both in our real lives. So I guess the key is digging into the nitty-gritty, cutting away the surface, and applying that to the book.

CommitmentNow.com:  What advice do you have for first time novelists?

Allison:  I always say that aspiring authors need to listen to criticism and take their egos out of the equation. Too many folks – myself included – think that their early/first work is untouchable, when, in fact, it’s far from it. The only way to improve is to figure out where your weaknesses are, and in order to do that, you need to be open to constructive advice. I can sincerely say that if I hadn’t taken criticism early in my career, I never would have been published. Sometimes, you think you know what you’re doing when, if fact, you have no idea.

CommitmentNow.com:  Where can we learn more about you and your writing?

Allison:  All of my info is over on my website: www.allisonwinn.com. Additionally, I’m a pretty active blogger – I run a blog that’s geared toward writers and aspiring writers, where I answer their publishing questions and conundrums. Finally, I adore both twitter and Facebook, and you can find me @aswinn and on my fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Allison-Winn-Scotch/49841196684?ref=ts

Allison Winn Scotch is the bestselling author of Time of My Life and The Department of Lost and Found. Prior to her fiction, she was a frequent contributor to numerous magazines and websites including Cooking Light, Family Circle, Fitness, Glamour, and Redbook, and now focuses on celebrity profiles for a variety of magazines. She lives in New York with her family. For more about her and her books, go to www.allisonwinn.com or follow her on Twitter at @aswinn.

To purchase The One That I Want, click here.