Unlike many writers, I do not keep a daily journal. However, at random intervals — separated by days, weeks, or even months — I record my thoughts, among them ideas about the art and craft of writing. I also preserve quotes from other writers that make me think, “Yes, that’s how it is.” (Or, conversely, “No, it’s different for me.”) Since the inspiration often occurs at inconvenient moments, I jot down the ideas on scraps of paper, put them in an envelope, and periodically brew a cup of tea and enter them in a chronological set of spiral-bound notebooks. Here is a sampling, beginning with the most recent. Feel free to react with your own “Yes” or “No.”
Character Rules. “For me the novel is character creation. Style is nice, plot is nice, structure is OK, social significance is OK, symbolism worms its way in, timeliness is OK too, but unless the characters convince and live the book’s got no chance” (Author Larry McMurty in a letter to author Ken Kesey). I agree. For me, before the seed for a story or novel can germinate, I have to answer the question, “Who is the book about. What’s the point of view?” Once I know the character(s), the ideas begin to flow and I can write. (Posted 10/02/23)
Remnick Interviews Rushdie. “Rushdie went on, ‘I just thought, There are various ways in which this event can destroy me as an artist.’ He could refrain from writing altogether. He could write ‘revenge books’ that would make him a creature of circumstances. Or he could write ‘scared books,’ novels that ‘shy away from things, because you worry about how people will react to them.’ But he didn’t want the fatwa to become a determining event in his literary trajectory” (“Defiance” by David Remnick, The New Yorker, 02/13&20/23). Writing takes courage, vision, and sometimes, heroic single-mindedness. (Posted 02/21/23)
What Writing and Chocolate Have in Common. “Weekends and weekdays don’t matter to a writer. I’ve discovered through my life, if you take the day off, it takes you two days to get back to where you were. You need to keep it going in your head” (Erica Jong, “How Erica Jong, Writer, Spends Her Sundays,” The New York Times, September 24, 2022). I agree. Writing is self-fueling. A day without writing is as unsatisfying as a day without chocolate. (Posted 09/25/22)
“Mine!” Okay for Toddlers, Not for Cultures. As a novelist and short story writer, I have criticized charges of “cultural appropriation” because they stifle creativity and don’t acknowledge the role of empathy and imagination in fiction (see my essay “Theirs or Ours? Who Owns Culture? Appropriation on the Docket”). Claiming something is “Mine!” is normal in toddlers, but damaging in literature and the arts. So, it was with many head nods that I read The New York Times opinion piece, “The Limits of Lived Experience” by Pamela Paul. I encourage you to read her whole essay, but here are some excerpts that especially resonated with me: “According to many of those who wish to regulate our culture, only those whose ‘lived experience’ matches the story are qualified to tell the tale. This is one point of view, and as with most points of view, some of it is valid. Clearly those who have lived through something — whether it’s a tsunami or a lifetime of racial discrimination — have a story to tell. Their perspective is distinct and it’s valuable. But it is, crucially, only one perspective. And to suggest that only those whose identities match those of the people in a story — whether it’s the race of a showrunner or the sex of the author of a book under review — is a miserly take on the human experience. Surely human beings are capable of empathizing with those whose ethnicity or country of origin differ from their own. Surely storytellers have the ability to faithfully imagine the experiences of “the other.” If we followed the solipsistic credo of always “centering” identity when greenlighting a project, we’d lose out on much of journalism, history and fiction. Culture is a conversation, not a monologue. The outsider’s take, whether it comes from a journalist, historian, writer or director, can offer its own equally valid perspective. Furthermore, authenticity of voice in a novel, for example, doesn’t guarantee quality of prose, storytelling, pacing, dialogue or other literary merits. Good writing, a strong performance and a great story all are feats of the imagination. Taken to its logical conclusion, the belief that ‘lived experience’ trumps all other considerations would lead to a world in which we would create stories only about people like ourselves, in stories to be illustrated by people who looked like ourselves, to be reviewed and read only by people who resembled ourselves. If we all wrote only from our personal experience, our films, performances and literature would be reduced to memoir and transcription. What an impoverished culture that would be.” (Posted 05/03/22)
If a Tree Falls in the Forest … Reviewing Lost in the Valley of Death, a biography of trekker Justin Alexander Shetler, Michael Paterniti considers the contradiction of a solitary seeker who is nevertheless compelled to write about his exploits on social media, and asks “the most telling spiritual question: If you don’t post about a profound experience, did it really happen?” (The New York Times Book Review, 02/13/22). The literary corollary, “If you don’t send your manuscript into the world, are you really a writer?” raises the question, “What’s the difference between a job and a hobby?” I’d say the latter is solely for personal satisfaction whereas the former also entails an external reward — publication, good reviews, reader thanks, even (rarely) income. I called myself a writer only after I began submitting work. If I continued to write but stopped submitting manuscripts, I’d still consider myself a writer but no longer list it as my job on my tax return. (Posted 02/15/22)
Must Chekhov’s Gun Go Off? “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” (Anton Chekhov). French feminist filmmaker Céline Sciamma, profiled by Elif Batuman in The New Yorker (February 7, 2022), says that while patriarchy insists “conflict is the natural dynamic of the storyteller,” she moves beyond that dictum. In Sciamma’s movies, situations that would typically elicit an explosive conflict are met with acceptance, even agreeableness. Yet her films sustain dramatic interest. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen Sciamma’s films, only read about them.) Comments Batuman, “Perhaps Sciamma is on to a secret that nobody else has guessed: you don’t actually have to shoot Chekhov’s gun.” I wondered whether writers could likewise make their characters say “No problem” instead of “No way!” It was akin to inverting Tolstoy’s observation and declaring, “Every happy family is happy in its own way.” As a feminist myself, I applaud Sciamma’s sensibilities, but I can’t imagine eliminating conflict from my narratives. My work rarely features physical violence, but conflict, conveyed through words, gestures, and body language, is key to character development and plot. A gun may not be fired, but someone is bound to shoot off their mouth or fire off a letter. So, my view is that what makes a creative product “nonpatriarchal” is how conflicts are resolved. (Posted 02/23/22)
A book is a puzzle in which we look for ourselves, even (or especially) in the most unlikely places. (Posted 02/15/21)
“There is no mastery without apprenticeship, no success without failure; and in literature, artists who arrive fully formed are so rare as to be practically nonexistent. Their lives would not, in any case, make for illuminating biographies; it is the mind’s progression that gives narrative to the writer’s life. Failures do not diminish subsequent achievements but, by illustrating the difficulty of attaining them, magnify them instead.” (Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser) Not that I expect someone to write my literary biography, but Moser’s astute observation is nevertheless reassuring as I survey the evolution of my own work. (Posted 07/08/20)
If writers succumbed to charges of cultural appropriation, literature would be devoid of imagination and empathy. Says Hari Kunzru in The Guardian (10/01/16), “Clearly, if writers were barred from creating characters with attributes that we do not ‘own’ (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on), fiction would be impossible. Stories would be peopled by clones of the author.” (Posted 01/24/20)
“When I finish something and it seems good, I’m dazed. It must have been fun to write. I wish I’d been there.” — “The Art of Dying” by Peter Schjeldahl (Personal Essay in The New Yorker, 12/23/19). Schjeldahl captures the “Did I really write that?” sensation that many writers, including myself, experience. Writing is a present/absent process. One is at once fully immersed in the act, yet also removed to another plane. (Posted 12/17/19)
Peter Schjeldahl, art critic and poet
“It is curious how the act of writing leads to confession. Not that it doesn’t also lead to lying your head off.” — Sigrid Nunez, The Friend: A Novel, p. 139 (Posted 12/14/19)
In his profile of director Todd Haynes, critic John Lahr writes “When Haynes was in eleventh grade, his film teacher, Chris Adams, told him ‘that films shouldn’t be judged on how they conveyed reality, that films were not about reality.’ Cinema was a trick, almost like Renaissance perspective: a two-dimensional event that represented three-dimensionality; it created the sense of direct, unmediated life, whereas, in fact, everything in it was mediated. The notion, Haynes said, was ‘a revelation to me.’ He began to interrogate our ‘endless presumptions about reality and authenticity.’” (“The Director’s Cut: How Todd Haynes rewrites the Hollywood playbook” by John Lahr, The New Yorker, 11/11/19, p. 57). I think this observation also applies to writing fiction. The author’s challenge is to make readers experience a highly mediated story as a direct and real event. As a writer, I bend reality to my “narrative will” so that fact and fiction are equally plausible and hence achieve authenticity. (Posted 11/28/19)
Raphael’s “School of Athens” is considered the renaissance painter’s masterpiece because of its accurate projection of perspective
As a fiction writer whose work is not autobiographical, I sometimes get annoyed when people assume it is. I’ve struggled to explain that when authors insert bits of themselves and those they know in their characters, it’s called empathy, not autobiography. So thank you, Colson Whitehead, for this cogent description: “A piece of art really works when you see yourself in the main characters and you see a glimpse of yourself in the villains” (“Author Colson Whitehead Reminds Us to See Ourselves” by Mitchell S. Jackson, Time, July 8, 2019). (Posted 07/03/19)
Versatile, talented, and wise author Colson Whitehead
“For me, writing is really just learning about the things that interest me, and then trying to convince you to find them as interesting as I do.” — Susan Orlean on Twitter
Whether you write nonfiction (like the marvelous Susan Orlean) or fiction, the maxim applies. Good nonfiction writers engage readers in subjects they never thought they’d care about. Fiction writers, especially those who do extensive background research, are equally responsible for incorporating what they learn in ways that are integral to their stories. If we fail to generate that interest, the manuscript will be of interest to only one person — the writer. (Posted 06/26/19)
Nonfiction writer Susan Orlean can make any subject interesting
The late and revered author E. L. Doctorow said of nighttime driving, “You can see only as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Doctorow could just as well have been talking about writing. You can only see as far as the next word or sentence, but guided by the headlights of imagination, you can write a whole book. (Posted 01/14/19)
Nighttime driving is like writing. Yard by yard, word by word, guided by the headlights of imagination, you get there.
E. L. Doctorow
From an interview with historian and writer Jill Lepore: “The Academy Is Largely Itself Responsible for Its Own Peril: Jill Lepore on writing the story of America, the rise and fall of the fact, and how women’s intellectual authority is undermined” by Evan Goldstein (Chronicle of Higher Education, November 13, 2018):
Q. You get asked about your productivity a lot. I gather it’s a question you don’t like.
A. I sometimes say to people — this is like a 1930s thing to say, you can picture Barbara Stanwyck saying it in a noir film — it’s like complimenting a girl on her personality. It’s not about “You do good work,” it’s about “You do a lot of work.” // For a lot of people writing is an agony; it’s a part of what we do as scholars that they least enjoy. For me writing is a complete and total joy, and if I’m not writing I’m miserable. I have always written a lot. For years, before I wrote for The New Yorker, I wrote an op-ed every day as practice and shoved it in a drawer. It’s not about being published, it’s about the desire to constantly be writing. It’s such a strongly felt need that if it was something socially maladaptive it would be considered a vice.
I’m with her. Read Lepore’s latest book, These Truths. (Posted 11/16/18)
In the November/December 2018 issue of Poets & Writers, Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers talk about their latest novels (Unsheltered and The Overstory, respectively) and the craft of writing [“A Talk in the Woods” by Kevin Larimer, 46(6), pp. 46-55]. I particularly resonated with Kingsolver’s description of her writing process as it bore many similarities to how I work. Sample “quotes” [with my annotation]: (1) “I do a lot of architecture. I do an enormous amount of planning. … Then I’ll just write almost like a movie treatment — a few sentences about what happens in each chapter — and then I’ll break each of those out into a computer file, and that way if I start seeing a scene that’s happening at the end, I can just go to that chapter and write whatever I want to write.” [I also keep what I call a “parking lot” file where I jot down ideas for chapters I haven’t yet written, or something to add to a chapter I’ve already written on the next revision.] (2) “The real art comes from revision. Because you can take that ending and pull it back through the whole thing, and the minute you know for sure where you’ll end up, then you can start angling, holding up mirrors in different scenes that lead the reader in the right direction without giving away too much.” [I “post-shadow”myself in order to “fore-shadow “the reader; see the second part of “parking lot” above.] (3) “It is fascinating that every writer has a different process; many, I know, say ‘Well I just start writing and I don’t have any idea where I’m going to end up, and it’s like a wander through the woods.’ I think if I did that it’d be trash.” [I can’t face a blank page. I have to begin with the thought “this is about …” and freely jotted bullets before I connect those ideas into coherent sentences. The framework will inevitably change as I develop the narrative, but I need that initial structure at the outset. I find it liberating, not limiting.] (4) “That’s one of the many things I love about revision: Any weak parts, if their motivations aren’t clear, you can back all the way up to the beginning, and you can begin building up motivation right from the start. … I wish I could pay someone to write my first draft, and then I would just revise. (Laughter.)” [I don’t want to hire a draft ghost-writer, but I love the relief that comes from knowing I can revise and the satisfaction of shoring up that foundation on later rounds.] (5) “I think self-forgetting is really important and really valuable, and in times past it was for most people a function of religion, spirituality, culture, music … so the novel gives you the space to leave yourself and go be someone else. … It’s something we must crave because the novel as a form has remained pretty consistent for hundreds of years.” [And, allowing for the addition of new forms, may storytelling as I/we know it remain so for the indefinite future.] (Posted 10/22/18)
Anne Tyler does not plan to retire from writing. “There’s something addictive about leading another life at the same time you’re living your own. . . . If you think about it, it’s a very strange way to make a living” (“Attention, Please: Anne Tyler Has Something to Say” by Charles McGrath, The New York Times, July 5, 2018). For those of us who create worlds and abide with our characters, even after a book is done, this phenomenon is indeed strange. It is also marvelous and, some would say, god-like. (Posted 07/06/18)
Anne Tyler
More arguments against “Write what you know.” My counter-argument to “Write what you know” has always been “Get to know what you want to write about.” The inspiration for my fiction often comes from something I learn by chance. Then I research the topic with intention and shape what I’ve learned into a work of fiction, prioritizing the story over the facts. In an e-doc compilation of author’s views on the role of research in writing (Glimmer Train, Close-Up: Research, 2nd edition), I came across the following supportive comments:
* Some people say that you should write what you know, but I am driven to write what I learn. (Abbi Geni, p. 7)
* I have my own life, which is an ordinary sort of middle-class, white, immigrant life, and then I have this other life, which is in this room, or in whatever room I happen to write. That’s when I travel these days — when I sit still. That’s part of the joy of it, because you really feel like you’re experiencing things. (Colum McCann, p. 9)
* Most of this [research] will never appear in the novel. It’s just background for the story. But I want to know; I want to have it right even if it’s never mentioned. I think sometimes hiding behind the curtains of a book is that knowledge. (Suri Hustvedt, p. 26)
* I read a lot of books and looked at pictures to find the right details. It’s a very laborious process, but it helps me understand the characters and find the small details of the world they inhabit. Whenever I come across a good detail, I feel pleased. (Ha Jin, p. 30) (Posted 07/02/18)
In Michael Cunningham’s perceptive and laudatory review of The Great Believers, a two-part AIDS novel by Rebecca Makkai (The New York Times Book Review, July 01, 2018, p. 20), Cunningham says “[Makkai’s] method descends from Tolstoy’s War and Peace (yes, a grand comparison), in which Napoleon’s advance on Moscow alternates with the more intimate stories of Russians struggling to live their lives. Tolstoy understood, perhaps better than any other writer, that history-altering events not only coincide with private events that alter individual lives but that if a narrative excludes either in favor of the other, it’s only a partial account of our vast, infinitely complicated world.” This balance is what I try to achieve in my short story collection, Between the Wars, which has the log line: “The fourteen stories in Between the Wars span the years from World War I to World War II (1911-1946). The narratives go beyond the battlefield to examine how extraordinary events change ordinary lives and how, conversely, minor happenings can affect actions, feelings, and relationships.” The collection is in search of an agent or publisher, but you can read about several of the individual narratives already in print in STORIES. (Posted 07/01/18)
(SPOILER ALERT) The solution to the New York Times acrostic puzzle on April 05, 2018 is: Stella Adler, The Art of Acting, “The reality you create on the stage by opening a jar or threading a needle isn’t so that the audience will believe in you. It’s so that you believe in yourself. Acting is truthful when you yourself are convinced.” Adler’s analysis applies equally well to writing. That is, the reality you create on the page with character, setting, and plot isn’t so that the reader will believe in your narrative but rather that you, the writer, convince yourself. (Posted 04/06/18)
Like the mason builds a cathedral one stone at a time, so too the writer builds a book one word at a time. Admittedly, this thought is not original (read Anne Lamott’s classic manual Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life) but it encourages the novelist to aim for a magnificent literary edifice. (Posted 04/06/18)
Using too many metaphors is (to use a metaphor) an overstuffed cork board . An excess of push-pinned memos, photos, and news clippings prevents any one from commanding attention. (Posted 03/25/18)
In an interview, a lighting designer described the three “tudes” necessary to do his job: attitude, aptitude, and fortitude. I added five more for THE EIGHT TUDES OF WRITING. In alphabetical order (because they are of equal importance, albeit at different stages of the creative process): Attitude (thinking of yourself as a writer) // Aptitude (knowing your craft) // Beatitude (the blessing of a creative mind) // Certitude (confidence in the worth of your idea) // Exactitude (seeking the precise word or phrase) // Fortitude (butt-to-the-chair persistence in the face of rejection) // Gratitude (for the gift of writing in your life) // Latitude (to write “shitty first [or more] drafts”). (Posted 03/25/18)
“As a writer you’re always surprised when you think of the right note or the right word. You think, ‘Oh, I didn’t know I could — oh, that’s good!’ You know, writing’s full of surprises for oneself. It comes with the territory, but this is a different kind of thing. This is surprising the audience” (“Stephen Sondheim: Theater’s Great Lyricist” interviewed by Lin-Manuel Miranda in The New York Times Style Magazine, October 16, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/t-magazine/lin-manuel-miranda-stephen-sondheim.html). The “surprise” Sondheim refers to is what writers experience when we have no idea from whence the spot-on image, adjective, object, phrase, metaphor, or gesture, arises. Magic is at work. If we’d been somewhere else at the moment, the “just so” would have been lost. We dream of creating that magical surprise for our readers as well. (Posted 10/26/17)
In a thoughtful interview with Alice Hoffman (“Story Magic” by Jack Smith, The Writer, October 2017), I found many points of agreement between her approach to writing and mine. In response to questions about the role of research, Hoffman replies “I do quite a bit of research before I start a project, then stop for a while because I have to step away from history and write a novel” and “While the research is interesting, the most important thing is writing the novel and creating the characters.” Regarding how she chooses the novel’s point of view, Hoffman says, “I don’t really decide on the narrative point of view — the book comes with a point of view. I kind of play around with it and something just clicks and feels right.” On beginning to write, she describes her process this way: “I make an outline. That outline changes in writing, but it gives me a place to begin.” About endings, “I begin a book with an ending so that I know where I’m going even though I don’t particularly know the whole journey. Sometimes that changes, and sometimes it remains the same.” To which I say, “Yes, yes, yes, and yes.” Although I don’t emulate or model myself on other writers, discovering that some work in ways similar to mine always provokes a smile of camaraderie. (Posted 09/12/17)
Alice Hoffman
My craft essay “The Five Percent Rule” (The Artist Unleashed, November 01, 2017, in press) describes how I narrow down the vast trove of historical research I collect to the small amount that actually makes it into my fiction. As I’ve written in another REFLECTIONS post (08/02/17), as fascinating as I find the facts I unearth, I remind myself that I’m not writing an academic document but a work of literature. Restraint is the answer. Fortunately, the unused information does not go to waste, but appears in other NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, and/or BEHIND THE STORY. Check my BLOG and NEWS for a link to the article when it’s published on November 1st. Meanwhile you can read published pieces at The Artist Unleashed website http://www.theartistunleashed.com/. (Posted 09/06/17)
Noteworthy excerpts from an interview “Elizabeth Strout is There” by Jack Smith (The Writer Magazine, August 1, 2013).
Q: You’ve been praised for your ability to “humanize characters.” How do you accomplish this?
A: It’s the ability to imagine very deeply. It’s kind of like drilling down. I’ve gotten under the topsoil. Now I’ve got to go under the next layer, under the next layer, and so on.
Q: You make use of the omniscient point of view in your novels, sometimes with fairly extensive authorial commentary. And yet we get quite close to your characters. How do you manage such a difficult balancing act?
A: I think of it like a spotlight that is moving around the planet, and it swoops down and takes a very close look at one person and then kind of moves off into the landscape and then finds another person to concentrate on. You can’t switch point of view too abruptly. The reader doesn’t want to be pulled out of the experience of reading. It works as long as readers feel like they’re still tucked into that voice that’s telling them a story. … If you’ve got that narrative voice strong enough, you can do that kind of swooping.
Q: Your settings are quite vivid. How do you manage to create such detailed settings?
A: I keep asking: What do I see? What does that look like? I’m very much of an over-writer, which is why I revise constantly and throw away so much. … I’ll think: Which details do I really need to give a sense of what that’s actually like for [the character]? (Posted 08/14/17)
When I write historical fiction, I keep the focus on the characters. I scale back the temptation to include more of the “historical” research than is necessary to scaffold the “fiction.” Settings and events around the characters frame the narrative, but readers must first and foremost care about the people experiencing them. This is equally true of engaging contemporary or futuristic fiction. Good fiction writers relegate their research, however fascinating it is to us, to the background. Whenever something I learn about history motivates me to write about it, I ask myself “What is the story I want to tell? Who is it about? How do the players act and how are they acted upon?” Answering these questions is how I bring history to life in my fiction. (Posted 08/02/17)
“Withholding is important to Strout. She never speaks about books before they’re finished because, she said, ‘there’s a pressure that has to build, and if I talk about it then I can’t write it. It’s like putting a pin in a balloon and just popping the air out’” (Elizabeth Strout in “A Long Homecoming” by Ariel Levy, The New Yorker, May 1, 2017, p. 23). This is NOT the case with me. Talking about what I’m working on pumps in more air. Or, more precisely, I get a boost talking about the interesting information I discover while doing the background research that in turn gives me ideas for character or plot development. (See BEHIND THE STORY to inflate your own balloon.) Sharing energizes me to get on with the writing. (Posted 05/08/17)
I get annoyed when readers ask whether my fiction is autobiographical. It is not. To ask (or worse assume) that I’m telling my own story misunderstands the purpose of writing fiction. It also feels like an invasion of privacy, as though people want to uncover my secrets or engage in armchair psychoanalysis. I write fiction to imagine and understand people whose lives are not like mine. That is the wonder of fiction, for writers and readers alike. I’m not the only writer who reacts badly to this question. Author Jami Attenberg describes the anger and impatience that many of us feel in her article “It’s My Fiction, Not My Life!” (The New York Times Book Review, 03/26/17, p. 13). She quotes the wonderful response given by Wallace Stegner in a 1990 interview with Paris Review: “The very fact that some of my experience goes into the book is all but inescapable, and true for almost any writer I can name. Which is real and which is invented is (a) nobody’s business, and (b) a rather silly preoccupation, and (c) impossible to answer. . . . The kind of roman à clef reading determining biographical facts in fiction is not a good way to read. Read the fiction.” So dear readers, when you immerse yourselves in a book, care about the lives of the characters, not the life of the author. (Posted 03/26/17)
Thomas Mallon (The New Yorker, February 13 & 20, 2017, p. 89), reviewing George Saunder’s original and affecting novel Lincoln in the Bardo, says “The premise of the book is like many that give rise to historical fiction: intriguing and a little shaky.” As a writer of historical fiction, I agree with Mallon’s observation. I wouldn’t pursue a topic if it didn’t pique my interest. Shakiness is the fault line that cracks open a person, event, and/or place in my imagination. (Posted 03/06/17)
George Saunders, interviewed by Kevin Larimer describes how, after penning short stories for decades, he was able to write his first novel: “The more I said, ‘The principles don’t change, but maybe the scale changes,’ then I could do it…. If your natural inclination is to make small, concise structures, then form shows up and says. ‘Would you like me to help you link your small, concise structures?’ And then form seems organic.” (“The Emotional Realist Talks to Ghosts,” Poets & Writers, March/April 2017, pp. 40-41). I thought about how I too made the leap from writing stories to creating my first novel, A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see Novels). While my book is structured nothing like Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, each section works as a self-contained episode in the protagonist’s life. Linking them into a 45-year arc of character development then seemed doable to me. Some of my subsequent novels have been variants on this paradigm, e.g., a protagonist searching for her father’s identity interviews people who knew her mother over a 50-year period; an elderly man looking for a place to finish his life tries living with each of his many children in turn. While not all of my novels fit this pattern, and some stories use unconventional formats, thinking in terms of “same principles, different scale” allows me to write in the style that comes naturally. To paraphrase Anne Lamott, a novel grows “story by story.” (Posted 03/06/17)
“Kim Gillingham, a dream coach who has attracted a stable of working actors [using] Jungian philosophy to help develop their roles, [says] ‘Over eight shows a week, I’m wiring that character’s way of thinking in my actual physical brain. How does my psyche respond to the irritant?’” (“Inside the Actors’ Dream Studio” by Finn Cohen, The New York Times, Arts & Leisure, 01 January 2017, p. 5). This thought leads me to wonder: How does getting inside the head of a character developed over a week, months, even years affect the psyche of a writer? (01/02/17) rxreviewz.com best 2019 customer reviews.
There are two approaches to writing. One is to just get it all down, Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft” model, then go back and revise. The other is to take it slow and revise as you go. Either method, with infinite permutations, gets you from start to finish. I’m definitely the slow-as-you-go type, carefully crafting each scene rather than racing ahead. I’m the same way with art; I’d rather construct a work one image at a time. Not that I don’t have some big picture in mind when I start a project, but it’s in the accumulation of details that I work my way to the end. I’d rather meander and explore than race to the goal. I’m likely to end up in a different place than I set out for. I like the surprise, but also the security of having built a solid path to get there. I take risky steps, not daredevil leaps, and that’s fine with me. (08/22/16)
When is the optimal time to write about a life experience? Write to soon and you lack the critical distance to observe and reflect. Wait too long and memory distorts events and erases critical details. This suggests an ideal midpoint, but there is never a good or bad time to write. Each creative effort produces something different, in its own voice, and with its own validity. (08/17/16)
I don’t write about rich people. A few acquire money, and an occasional secondary character is born to it, but for the most part, financial struggle is a staple of their lives. Is this an unconscious example of “write what you know?” Given my counter dictum of “Get to know what you want to write about” (see post of 05/01/10), I should find out about the upper crust life. Alas, it will be vicarious, but a fun boon to the imagination nonetheless. (08/06/16)
Writing fiction is like drawing. First you sketch the surface. Then you embellish the image with color and contrast. You keep adding layers until the composition feels complete. (07/09/16)
I like the physical act of writing by hand. It’s like drawing letters. (02/17/16)
Why I write historical fiction: Because each story begins with an implied “Once upon a time,” the classic invitation to step into a tale. (04/11/15)
Some make a difference in the world by getting behind ideas, others by getting in front of people. (02/19/15)
In nonfiction, you describe a tree the way you see it. In fiction, you describe a tree the way the character sees it. (02/01/13)
Writing grounds me in the present. I can’t fret over how I messed up the past or worry about the uncertain future. I’ve heard that the value of prayer is that it makes us stay in the moment. If that is true, then writing is my prayer. (12/27/12)
When you write nonfiction, you discover your own voice. When you write fiction, you discover the voice of your character. (01/20/12)
A story is about a relationship between two or more things, at least one of which is alive. (03/11/11)
“For the most part, stories do not explore characters’ ability to change; they explore who characters already are.” (“Writing Toward the Light” by David Harris Ebenbach, The Writer Magazine, December 2010, p. 16)
“Write what you know,” is the dictum. I say, “Get to know what you want to write about.” (05/01/10)
You can write because you have something to say OR you can find something to say because you want to write. I write fiction for the latter reason. (04/30/10)
Doing creative work fills me in a way that love never can. Vivian Gornich, in her memoir Fierce Attachments (especially pages 151-152), expresses the same sentiment. (03/27/10)
Sex is better after a good day of writing. (01/15/10)
I don’t always write plots that “go somewhere” because I’m more interested in getting into a character’s head than into his or her feet. (09/07/09)
How to judge my writing when someone else doesn’t “get it” or “like it?” Ask myself: Does the story feel authentic to me? If the answer is yes, I can dismiss the critic’s negative assessment. Of course, I can still improve the story, even with useful suggestions from the critic, but I must believe the story is valid and keep its essential identity. (09/04/09)
My most successful characters are outsiders. It’s not just that they see themselves as outsiders — we all do at some point — but that others see them that way too. Their self-perception is confirmed. Hmm: A story collection titled Confirmed Outsiders. (08/15/09)
“Writers with a good ear (Salinger, John O’Hara) certainly listen more acutely than the rest of us, but what they really have is a batter filter for telling signal from noise, and then turning it into song.” (“Talk it Up: Damon Runyan’s Guys and Dolls” by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 03/20/09, p. 69)
Writing can call attention to itself in three ways: (a) It can be so self-consciously bad that it is embarrassing to read and you rush to get through it; (b) It can be so torturously complex that you re-read it to try to understand what it means; or (c) It can be so perfect that you read it again to capture the beauty of the language and the image, feeling, or idea the words evoke. (03/16/09)
Science is one way of knowing. Fiction is another. (03/08/09)
A writer’s inclination is to tell everything you know. Yet to maintain the reader’s interest and sustain the narrative tension, a writer must withhold information. One solution to this dilemma: Spill it all out in the first draft, then go back and parcel it out in the revisions. And cut, cut, cut everything you revel in knowing but that does not advance the story. (03/05/09)
Fiction is story with just enough back story to make it credible. Biography is back story with just enough story to make it interesting. (08/11/07)
Fiction is as accurate as it wants to be. Real is not the same as accurate. (03/21/06)
If I can laugh about it, I’m ready to write about it. (01/29/06)
Four encouraging rejections to date. I made a folder for them. Maybe I have a future as a writer. (08/19/03)