Lisa Taddeo on writing Animal in a hot, dusty attic

When I was living in Topanga, where I had, um, I eventually wrote much of “Animal” about, um, the place that I was living in Topanga, California. And I was working in this little hotbox of a third floor attic. It was, oh, so hot up there it was, like, 100 degrees every day. I had a fan, but I do like to be somewhat uncomfortable when I’m writing. Whenever I’m too comfortable, I feel like I’m forgetting why I’m writing. So there was something about this little, dirty attic hellhole where I just wrote every day. I’d go up there at, like, 9 and I’d have to like, take a break at, like, noon ’cause it was getting too hot. It was just a little wooden desk and a chair and nothing else. Literally nothing else, just my computer. And now, you know I need all my books around me and I need all these things. But I didn’t wanna unpack there because I didn’t like it, I hated it. So I felt like if I unpacked I would be there forever. So I just... It felt good to me to sort of get myself out of a situation, in a sense. [Laughs] That’s kind of what I was doing there. Um, and I would look out the window. It was a beautiful view. It was beautiful. Uh, we were up, like, in the highest point of, um, Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. We were above the clouds... Um, we were in the clouds, rather. And it was absolutely beautiful but it was hot and, um, airless. And, uh, yeah. And that’s where I wrote.