Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Larry Atlas, author of South Eight, the story of a young doctor’s collision with the demands and contradictions of modern acute care medicine, both its power and failings, and the moral questions it ultimately provokes.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

My background as a writer was entirely in plays and screenplays, exactly zero in prose fiction. So when, quite by accident (honest, it’s true!) I found myself working in a hospital first as a nurse, and then within a few years as a nurse practitioner hospitalist, my initial thought was to write something for the stage. In fact, I tried that twice, and within pages knew that it wasn’t going to work. What I wanted to write, the internal experience of treating hospital patients, could only work as a novel. That was a starting point, a hospitalist physician, in the heart of that world, his experience of it, and of the patients and co-workers.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I set out thinking of South Eight as “literary fiction,” but built a plot around events and a patient from the central character’s past, how they intersect with the main character’s present position, the power the current position.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Well, this is my first novel, but as with plays and screenplays, I was surprised by how the story did actually, in important ways, assume a life of its own. I remember reading somewhere, about playwriting, that the characters will tell you how the story should unfold. I think that was true here. Also, I love mysteries and thrillers, so perhaps it was natural that I’d incorporate those elements as I wrote.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Often. On any given day there’re a dozen possibilities in the news, or someone will tell me a story they’ve heard that has interesting twists, possibilities. The question always is, will it hold up, will it hold one’s interest the next day, a week later, a month. And if it does, will it have enough “room” for expansion into a complete work, whatever the form.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

Well, in my case I’m still working in medicine — can I say active sideline in medicine? — which takes a lot of time and energy. So, the question is, do I have a story, a single story, that is so compelling that I simply have to find the time and energy, to write it. One can have a lot of ideas percolating, as you say, but having that one that comes to a boil in a sense, chooses itself.

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I have a four-year-old black Labrador who comes into my writing space and lies on the blue couch there. Once in a while she’ll bring me her ball to remind me it’s time to take a break.

Larry Atlas is a former Drill Sergeant who served in the Army. After his service, he attended Bennington College, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees before declining admission to medical school —and moving to New York to begin a successful career as an actor, playwright, and screenwriter. Among his produced plays are Total Abandon and the award-winning Yield of the Long Bond which premiered at the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles. He worked on multiple studio film projects including Sleepless in Seattle. He conceived and implemented the first nationwide online actors’ casting service, and then later co-invented and patented the first navigable nonlinear video architecture. Larry lives in upstate New York with actor-turned-therapist Ann Matthews, and their dog Ruby.