“Stick to the book and the reading only,” warned a publicist at a reading for Sammy’s House, the new book by former Vice President Al Gore’s middle daughter Kristin, 30, at the Upper West Side Barnes and Noble on Monday, July 9. And yes, we were sufficiently cowed not to ask about 24-year-old Al Gore III’s arrest last week in a pot and pills–packed Prius speeding down a Laguna Hills, Calif. highway.
How, with all of these, erhm, outside distractions, does Ms. Gore find the focus to write? “It’s all discipline and schedule for me,” she said. Sammy’s House is a sequel to her 2004 comedic novel Sammy’s Hill. “I mean, it’s very easy to get distracted by the real world and things that intrude constantly and it takes dedication to live totally in your head and be tuned out. So for me, it’s also tempting in a creative profession to start feeling like, ‘I’m just not feeling the creative juices today, I can’t do this.’ And I’ve learned that that’s a huge trap, too, because it can stretch into a longer block.”
Writing can be lonely, added Ms. Gore, who was wearing a bluish-green shirt, black pants and strappy black shoes. “I can go days without meaningful human interaction,” she said. All the more so in Los Angeles, where she has been working on screenplays, including a film adaptation of the Sammy books, on which she has collaborated with Lily Tomlin–inflaming director David O. Russell. She called Mr. Russell a “creative genius.” Production is slated to begin by the beginning of next year. “I wouldn’t be out there if it weren’t for the job,” Ms. Gore said.
The authoress, who recently wrote a letter to The Washington Post denying that she’d mined the Clintons for material, stressed that she attempts to remove as much of her personal history from her fiction as possible. “The words Democrat or Republican are never used,” she said. “I don’t really go into labels or an in-depth discussion of different value systems, because for me it’s sort of the truth of the situation in D.C. Certainly in my fictional depiction of it there are decent, shameless people on both sides at every level.” Also, in case you were wondering: Ms. Gore said she has absolutely no plans to go into politics. “It’s all writer ambitions!”
