In her writing, Shreve draws heavily on her own experiences and the true circumstances of others, as well as her imagination, for her novels. Resistance is based upon an incident during World War II in a small Belgian town. The Pilot's Wife begins with an exchange that Shreve overheard at a party between an airline pilot and another guest. New England and the sea are also critical themes in Shreve's works. I could be a writer for the rest of my life and not exhaust the descriptions of it.
Writing is a solitary, and often lonely, pursuit.
I remember when I was a journalist that particular feeling of energy when dealing with editors and copyeditors and from interviewing other people. But teaching college and teaching high school are worlds apart. To start, the students in Shreve's class, Fiction Writing II, actually want to be there. In fact, they had to submit a piece of their own work even to get into the class. Shreve guides her students' raw talent by focusing on the structural and technical aspects of writing.