Yes! I always build character playlists while I'm writing.

Does your writing process include listening to songs, and did you choose any particular types of music while working on it?

Eleanor & Park is a book driven by music.

That feelingit was almost forebodingthat INTERESTING THINGS were happening out there. With Eleanor & Park, I wanted to capture that time in the mid-'80s when alternative music and comic books were finally seeping into Middle America. Was it important to you that Eleanor & Park be set in the '80s and Attachments be set in 1999? How so?Īttachments had to be set in 1999 because it's about an IT guy who falls in love with a girl while he's monitoring her office emailand I needed the characters to be naive about email and Internet privacy.

You seem to incorporate a lot of experimenting with different settings time-wise in your writing.

And if they're older and they have, to feel it as a sense memory. If they're youngĪnd never been in love, for them to know yes, this how it feels. My motivation was to make people actually feel love, to give them a realistic view of it.

Eleanor & Park covers a lot of ground, from difficult family situations to the way music can open up a new world.

And I identify with Park, too - that feeling Park has that he can't afford to draw attention to himself. But I was never as tough orĪs hard as she is. I was cynical about love and romance - and the future. Ha! I see myself in all the characters! I think I was a lot like Eleanor when I was in high school.

Do you see yourself in any of the characters?.

It's like every 16-year-old in love is either Romeo or Juliet. There's a built-in tragedy to falling (truly) in love when you're 16. Have your own space⁚nd you also know that what you're feeling probably won't last. You don't belong to yourself quite yetyou still have school and your parents, you don't even But, at the same time, at that age, you have so little to offer the person you love. You fall in love with every cell of your body. I feel like, when you're 16, you have the greatest-ever capacity for romantic love. I have always, always wanted to write a first love story.

What inspired you to write a misfits-in-love story like Eleanor & Park.

Author Rainbow Rowell discusses first love and whether any of the characters in Eleanor & Park are based on her.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell