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Heather McElhatton isn't a morbidly obese concubine with a thing for primates. How's that for free will?
Mistakes Were Made
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek—bear with me here, this is going to be worth it—compared one of the choices we ritually make every four years, elections, to the "door close" button on an elevator: It exists purely to give us a false sense of choice and power. Those doors are going to close when they're going to close no matter what we do. We all know deep down that life is pretty random, that we don't choose our own adventure. It chooses us.
All the same, it's fun, for an escapist evening or two, to try to take the reins in our own hands: I know I can choose my way to the monkey sex! I know I can.
McElhatton's decision to take a teenage Italian sojourn didn't bring her to an erotic circus (I'm guessing). Instead there was waitressing and photography school, an MFA, decent success as a short-story writer, and a downright solid career as a radio producer, which allowed her to rub elbows with the likes of Rushdie. (She currently hosts an occasional live variety show, Stage Sessions, which can be heard on MPR.) For her, the end of the chapter didn't read, "Sell novel, flip to page 86. Live life in obscure penury, flip to page 119."
First novel sold, McElhatton now has two new deadlines to meet. HarperCollins is awaiting the follow-up to Pretty Little Mistakes, Million Little Mistakes, about everything we can do wrong after winning $22 million in the Big Money Suckah Lottery. And HarperPerennial has signed her up to write the female counterpart to Chad Kultgen's jerk-lit novel Average American Male.
"Overnight success is, You didn't know about me yesterday," she says, with only the faintest hint of defensiveness, "but I've been here duking it out."
McElhatton figures she'll never be immune to the what-if game. "I had kind of a tumultuous childhood," she says. "I think people who were insecure as children never really totally lose that. They're always looking around, 'Okay, what's going to happen next? Am I in the safest possible place? Is it as good as it could be?'"
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