Noelle Oxenhandler

From a Q & A with Noelle Oxenhandler about her new book, The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul -- A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire:

Q. What inspired you to write this book?

A. After fifteen years in the cold, gray Snowbelt of upstate New York, I returned to California, which is where I grew up. Almost immediately, I was struck by how many people around me seemed to have the “create-your-own-reality” approach to life. Among these people was Carole Watanabe, whom I encountered through my first attempt at “putting it out there,” when I was trying to find a studio where I could paint. Carole, it turns out, is the absolute Queen of Putting It Out There–and she became a powerful source of inspiration for the book.

Q. What surprised you most about your experiment in wishing?

A. The intensity of my own resistance! Though I knew that I’d be working against the grain of my own temperament, I really was not prepared for how often my skepticism would reassert itself–like a patch of weeds that sprang up every time I turned my back. This helped me to realize that my skepticism was not as rational as I had always thought it was. To a large degree it was just a kind of default mechanism, a certain habit of pessimism that was its own kind of superstition!

Read the complete Q & A.

The Page 99 Test: The Wishing Year.

--Marshal Zeringue