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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Listeners, this segment will discuss sexual assault. If this is triggering for you, or if at any time you need support, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline, 1-800-656-4673. In the new novel, Invisible Woman, a MeToo moment hits close to home for a talented and troubled woman named Joni. She was a rising star director in the 1990s and her best friend, Val, was starring in her film. They got separated at an industry party where a producer raped Val. Val didn't report the assault, swore Joni to secrecy about her assailant, and left the movie business.

Val and Joni haven't been in touch for years. Years later, Joni's own career has stalled, she hasn't directed in years. Meanwhile, her TV producer husband Paul's star has risen and he loves the attention and the massive mansion in Brooklyn he made the move into so he could establish a TV empire on the East Coast. She is tasked with throwing parties and raising the kids. When news of Val's attacker comes to light, Joni decides to reach out to her friend, Val, and encourage her to tell her story, but Val seems reluctant to come forward and is not happy by Joni's repeated attempts to contact her.

Joni doesn't relent, so Val agrees to meet for a drink in Dumbo but never makes it because Val is viciously attacked and left in a coma. When Joni becomes the number one suspect in her friend's assault, she must figure out what really happened that night and what happened to Val decades ago. Katia Lief is a professor of writing at the New School and she joins me now to discuss her book, Invisible Woman. Welcome to the studio.

Katia Lief: Hi, Alison. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Was this the original story you set out to write when you first sat down to write this novel?

Katia Lief: I wrote so many drafts of it. I think I have to say no, except at its heart, yes. I wanted to look at the emotions that were going to volcano up when all of these scabs of time were ripped off, the story, the women. It was really the gist that I was after. I worked really hard over many revisions to make sure that I was expressing that, but in terms of the story itself, that's always an evolution draft to draft to draft. I do a lot of revising.

Alison Stewart: Writing is rewriting as they say.

Katia Lief: Oh, it really is.

Alison Stewart: Would you read the prologue of Invisible Woman for us?

Katia Lief: I would be happy to. "The first time the thought came to her with clarity instead of anger, it was a warm evening in June, not long before the party that was supposed to launch a new phase of her husband's brilliant career. She was standing at the kitchen sink sponging tomato sauce off a white plate. She rinsed it and set it dripping in the dish drainer, then picked up a wine glass and scrubbed at a haze of lip gloss biting the rim. She put the glass down but left the water running as if the sound could blot out her thoughts as if he could hear them through the linkage of empty rooms.

'What if I killed him?' The thought arrived whole like a package delivered to her door. It shocked her and she slammed the door, but eventually, she cracked it open to take another look. Despite all their challenges, she had only recently started to fully imagine life without him. The thought had occurred to her, of course, but had never seized her like this. What really fascinated her wasn't the idea of his absence, but that it might be caused somehow by her. She was starting to crave a chance to exert force in his life, the way he'd exerted force in hers.

More and more, it was as if the defenses of the mutually agreeable life they'd built together had been stripped away. When they looked at each other now they no longer liked what they saw. Well, she didn't know what he felt about her at that point. What she knew, what she was starting to know, was that he was not the man she thought she had married. She turned the water off and closed her eyes, and went into revision mode. She was a writer, a director, a creator of worlds, and no idea ever survived without a vigorous remolding and nullified the violence of his imagined absence. She loved her husband, she did. Their commitment was based on not just love but friendship with roots that went deep and got tangled where no one could see. She'd get over it, she'd adjust. Other people killed their husbands, not her."

Alison Stewart: That's the prologue from Invisible Woman by Katia Leif. Just from that, we get the sense that these are two flawed humans. The two of them.

Katia Lief: Oh, yes.

Alison Stewart: What flaws did you want Paul to have? What flaws did you want Joni to have?

Katia Lief: Joni, I wanted to have the flaw of a little self-delusion and magical thinking to carry her forward through her life because it was hard to look at certain things too closely. For Paul, actually, through the drafts, I had to try and make him less likable. I don't think he was ever likable.

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. My guest is Katia Leif. We're talking about the book, Invisible Woman. We were talking about Paul, the husband in this case, and his likability.

Katia Lief: Okay. I tried to show his self-centeredness, his narcissism, even his lack of concern for his wife, for Joni, and moments where he wouldn't listen to her. Literally would just tune out. There's a scene where he drops a plate. They're having an intense argument at the table, and he doesn't like how it's going. He picks up his plate or bowl, I don't remember, and walks to the sink and drops it in. It sounds like it breaks and that jars her. That's a moment where there's a shift for her. She says, "Did you do that on purpose?" "No, I didn't," but obviously he did.

The reader knows that because it's clear, and she's starting to see that. She's starting to allow herself to see this. It's kind of the death by 1,0000 cuts approach where she just overlooked a lot of it, and in this story, she starts to see it.

Alison Stewart: In the novel, we get the sense that we're not quite sure Joni is an entirely reliable narrator because Joni has got a bit of a drinking problem. As you said, she's got some magical thinking. How did you play with that as a writer and in telling the story? I'm reading, and I'm like, "Is Joni, right, or is Paul right?"

Katia Lief: Right, a-ha. Good, that's what I wanted you to think. Perfect. The drinking, it's an obvious way that people mask pain. That was one of her bad habits. She was an alcoholic without thinking about it. Through the course of the story, when there's a very, very bad night, she realizes she has to get a handle on that.

Alison Stewart: Because she can't remember important things at an important time.

Katia Lief: She can't. She's blacked out something extremely important, and she wonders if she's culpable for something, for what happened to Val. She doesn't know. That really shocks her, and that's the awakening moment for her. That's when she starts to really pull back, she tries to stop drinking, and she gradually does. She does get a handle on that, and her thinking starts to clarify. That's really the window opening, kind of a dirty window that opens up onto the scene of what's going on around her now. That was a significant hurdle for her, yes.

Alison Stewart: In your characters of Joni and Val, why is Joni so hell-bent on getting Val to talk about her rape, and we won't give anything away, but why is Val so nervous about it?

Katia Lief: When the book opens, Joni receives an email from BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, inviting her to a Q&A about her own films in a series they're calling, Lost and Forgotten Women Filmmakers of the '80s and '90s. It's meant to be an honor, but she's really stung by it, women filmmakers, lost and forgotten.

Alison Stewart: She's a has-been.

Katia Lief: She's a has-been, and it hurts. She had an award-winning film when she started. She feels it opens up this well of pain, of confusion, of regret, and wondering for her what happened. At the same moment, really, there's this breaking news of a mogul who has been serially raping women in Hollywood, and this is the man who raped Val. MeToo was happening and Joni thinks, "This is it. We can't just sit here anymore. The passivity is smothering us. It's killing us. We have to talk, but it's not we, it's Val's experience. She feels that it's time, and she hopes Val feels the same way. Val doesn't feel the same way at first because she's left the world of--

Alison Stewart: She's moved on?

Katia Lief: She moved on. She built a whole new life and a very solid, happy, contented life. A good life. She's buried it very deeply. She's never spoken to her husband about it. She just doesn't want to, at first. She's not ready. She's also the one that would have to come out publicly. She doesn't know if she wants to.

Alison Stewart: Yes. They're both and the title refers to both of them being invisible. Val is invisible victim, and Joni is invisible in her marriage in many ways, invisible from the work that she used to do. We just got a text that's interesting. It says, "I studied writing with Katia Lief in 2001. She's an amazing teacher."

Katia Lief: Who's that?

Alison Stewart: I don't know.

Katia Lief: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Also, one of our producers took your creative writing class.

Katia Lief: Oh.

Alison Stewart: Zach did-

Katia Lief: Hi, Zach.

Alison Stewart: -at The New School, and they said that the focus was on suspense. That's really important in this novel as well. What are some strategies for deploying suspense in a novel?

Katia Lief: Okay. Zach, you took my suspense writing course? I haven't taught that one for a while. I believe suspense belongs in every novel, no matter how you categorize it, because suspense is the desire in a reader to keep reading, and you need that in any kind of novel, or movie, or a play, or anything at all. In writing suspense, it's a matter of, I think, asking a question that you don't answer till much later in the story.

Don't beat that question to death. Just put it out there. Very gradually, as you build character, and you build story and you move it forward, occasionally touch on it again. The idea is to try to have it so closely fused with character. The importance to a character who you as a reader could relate to so that it resonates emotionally. Listen, it's not like a formula, here's the recipe for it, but it is a technique. I guess I tried to teach it. A little bit less is more. Put it out there, but don't harp on it too much.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Katia Lief. She's a author and creative writing professor at The New School. The name of her new novel is Invisible Woman. This is largely about the entertainment business, but it's set in Brooklyn.

Katia Lief: Right.

Alison Stewart: Why did you set it in Brooklyn?

Katia Lief: I set it in Brooklyn for two reasons. One, I live there, I know it so well, and I love writing about it. Really, more than two reasons. One day, my husband and I were riding our bikes around or through Dumbo, and then we went down into Vinegar Hill, which is right off of Dumbo. We just, out of nowhere, came upon this huge white mansion sitting behind a gate and a huge, big lawn on a cul de sac. We were blown away. We immediately took out our phones. It's called the Commandant's House. I was just mesmerized by it, and I kept going back to it.

I decided at some point I was going to write about that. It was amazing. Meanwhile, it's pretty close to the Brooklyn Navy Yard with the Steiner Studios. When I decided to write about these people who worked in film, which is Joni in film, her husband in television, how could I write about them in a setting that I knew intimately? I could bring them to Brooklyn, and so I did. He opens a major television studio at Steiner, and he wrangles it so they can have the Commandant's House, which is like almost, I think, no other house or building in New York City. It's a big white mansion on a huge lawn behind a gate. It's crazy. That's how it happened. It was just fascination on fascination, and I just got pulled to it.

Alison Stewart: Since we're talking about Hollywood, in your mind, not that they would play them, but do you have actors in mind as you're reading it? At first, I was like, "Oh, Jon Hamm is Paul." I went right there.

Katia Lief: Ooh, he'd be great. I really have a hard time thinking of actors for it.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I got a ton of ideas.

Katia Lief: Oh, throw them out. Throw them out.

Alison Stewart: I thought if I were casting this, the Val and Joni part should be two of the three actresses from Friends. It should either be Lisa Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston or Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox so there's some sort of long-term--

Katia Lief: Oh, my God. You know what's so funny? We've been binging on Friends at home; the ultimate comfort show. I love that idea. Yes, that's great. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Oh, okay, we'll just put it out into the world. We're talking about Invisible Woman the name of the novel from Katia Lief. When you think about creative writing, we have some people who listen who are writers, how does one start? How does one start to write a novel? What should they do tomorrow?

Katia Lief: I always tell my students-- No, I'm not going to talk about my students because they always have deadlines. [laughter] What I would say to someone else who doesn't have a deadline is, first, really let the idea grow in your mind. Don't feel pressure. When the idea feels like it's starting to gain some traction, and it's starting to gain many, many elements and facets, and you almost can't not write it down, just sit down and just start writing with no agenda, and no pressure to, "I'm now writing the perfect first page to a novel that I'm going to finish in X amount of time." Take the pressure off, and just allow yourself to begin with an understanding that you're probably going to throw this pitch away. Find the characters and find the voice. When you find them, you'll know it, and you'll know when you've hit upon the right beginning.

Alison Stewart: In this book, Val and Joni are women who've had their careers derailed by men in Hollywood. Val because of the sexual assault, Joni because of her more powerful husband who may or may not have been causing her problems in her trying to advance her career. What did you want these two women's stories to illustrate about what it takes to make it as a woman in media and in Hollywood?

Katia Lief: It was, because they're in their 50s, their time when they were young women starting out, was more in maybe the '90s. I can't really speak to right now, but I'd love to hear-- What I really wanted to illustrate, especially with Joni-- With Val, it was clearly an assault, that you're not safe with your colleagues. Not that she wasn't safe, that that could happen on the most brutal level. With Joni, it was a little more subtle, and it involved her colluding with the process that brought her down. Her story is that she made an independent film, her voice, her idea, she got it done, she made it.

People loved it, it won awards, and it got her a big studio film. Her second film had money and prestige, and she became subject to pressures of executives who wanted it different. Of course, they were men, and she was pressured to change the ending so it wouldn't be a feminist ending. She gave in to that pressure because she was afraid if she didn't, she would not get a third film. It was collusion, and in this story, she begins to recognize that. It's not that she made the movie her way and it didn't do well. It's not that she had kids, and that was that. It was that she begins to recognize the ways in which she buckled to it. It's the self-collusion, which is a very disturbing thing I think for women, especially older women, to recognize.

Alison Stewart: The name of the novel is Invisible Woman. It is out now. My guest has been author and creative writing professor at The New School, Katia Lief. Katia, thank you so much for coming to the studio.

Katia Lief: Thank you for having me, Alison.

Alison Stewart: There's more All Of It on the way. We'll talk about a new mystery murder series on Showtime called The Woman in the Wall. That's next.

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