Kathleen Norris does not keep a high profile in Honolulu, where she's lived for eight years.

The author of four books and seven published collections of poetry hasn't won a Cades Award or a Governor's Award for Literature, Hawai'i's premiere literary honors, though her latest just hit No. 15 on the New York Times best-seller list.

But Norris, whose newest is "Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer's Life," recognizes that her quiet lifestyle may be the reason. She cared for her ailing husband, who died in 2006 after contracting lung cancer, and her father for a time.

"I've been caregiving," she said. "… I don't feel neglected. I'm not really out there, partly by choice, partly necessity. I end up more in doctors' offices than literary events."

With her latest, very personal, book, Norris has made the nearly archaic term acedia (ah-SEE-dee-ah) a known word. The term, which applies to a sort of listlessness that is not identical to depression, provides a common strand throughout Norris' exploration of transitions in her life, from inquisitive Honolulu teenager to spiritually questing wife.

"It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of our lives and the world, but we must still examine our response," she writes. "If we shrug and turn inward, are we normal, ill or somewhere in between? The very ubiquity of indifference should give us pause."

She answered these five questions from her San Diego hotel:

Q. You've written several memoirs covering your early years, your spiritual journeys and now your husband's battle with lung cancer. And there are six collections of poetry. Do you consider yourself a memoirist first or a poet first?

A. Poetry was my first love and my first two books were poetry. Now I love to go back and forth. Usually prose deflects poetry for a while. Now that I've finished another prose book, I'm hoping to get back to poetry.

Q. What's the difference between acedia and depression?

A. Acedia is called by so many names — boredom, ennui, depression. One of the problems I ran into writing this book is that we use depression for a catch-all word to mean anything from minor disappointment to major clinical illness. I knew I had to write about the distinction. The basic way was from my own experience. If I'm suffering from depression, I can pinpoint and find a cause. …

Acedia just comes out of nowhere. It's more an internal thing. Early monks called it a bad thought or demon. And it does feel like a demon, it just comes out of nowhere. I can resist it. If you're suffering from clinical depression, you really can't resist it. You just have to get help.

Q. You write about your first brush with acedia as a high-schooler at Punahou. Can you walk us through that moment?

A. I was working my scholarship job at the lunch hour, as the receptionist at Montague Hall, the music building. All of a sudden, I was just beset by a number of thoughts. One followed on the heels of another. Instead of looking forward to life as most 15-year-olds would, I was worrying about the future in very unhealthy ways, with time stretching out as burden, rather than anything I could enjoy. … I had to write this book because years later, I found a description of acedia, written by this monk who died in 399. He basically named my experience. That's what I had, and I've had subsequent episodes in my life.

Q. One answer you've given to resisting acedia is a spiritual mentor. What else?

A. For me, what works is going to the Psalms; that's the traditional monastic remedy. But also, keeping in touch with my community and friends. Acedia is a great disconnector. … Sometimes I think some of the 5-year-olds at church are my spiritual mentors. They're all mystics at that stage, their sense of reality is really refreshing, it's sort of fluid. … Even kids in the building, too. We visit in the elevator. One kid said he'd like to have a bike soccer team. Whoa! Just picture that! Who'd think of that except a little kid. It helps. When you're feeling down, you'll hear something like that and think, "Life is good. You don't have to worry. Life is good."

Q. Is it hard to cloister yourself? Where do you go when you need some monastic time?

A. I'm on the board of St. John's University in Minnesota. That's kind of a built-in break. … (Here), I have a quiet apartment. If I get up really early in the morning and nobody's going to call me, that's often when I can get both prayer and work time for myself.