How Novel Writing Cuts The ‘Cafeteria Line’ Of Life

Maria Frisone, replenishe’s food items along the lunch line of the cafeteria at Draper Middle School in Rotterdam, N.Y., Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)

Hans Pennink / Associated Press

A few weeks ago, best-selling author Joshilyn Jackson heard a poem, Katherine Perry’s “Baby Picture,” that got her thinking about life.

“It ‘poem haunted’ me, stuck,” she says.