Tag: Reflections from Ann S Epstein Writer

“I’ve always worried about all possible outcomes for anything I ever embarked on,” he said. Writing and directing appeared to be “a way for me to take chances without the same fear.” (“Charlie Kaufman’s Head Trips” by Jon Mooallem in The New York Times Magazine, July 05, 2020) Charlie Kaufman’s self-analysis rings true for me as a writer too, and I see how it would also apply to directing a film. If writers see something that isn’t working, they can delete or revise the text. Likewise, directors can cut or reshoot the segment. Most artists can change a work-in-progress, which allows us to take chances. The consequences of messing up are less dire in fiction or fantasy than they are in real life. After all, it’s only a book or movie (or painting, etc.). You can scrap it before you publish or release the work. Even if you put it out there, while you might get a bad review (and take a blow to your self-esteem), the risk to yourself is rarely higher, nor is it likely to hurt others. Creative work allows us to flirt with failure. We can even absolve ourselves of responsibility by claiming, “That was the character, not me.” For more of my thoughts on writing, see REFLECTIONS.

My safety mantra for writers and readers during the COVID-19 pandemic is Embrace Words, Not Worlds. Words are clear yet enigmatic, purposeful yet versatile. They heal and irritate, inspire and frustrate, prevent and push, encircle and divide, and divert and focus us. We bend words to our needs and desires; words mold us to their design and will. Please harness the power of words to care for yourself and others during these precarious times. For more of my literary thoughts, see REFLECTIONS.

As a fiction writer living alone, I’m so grateful for the company of my characters during this period of COVID-19 social isolation. For more of my thoughts on writing, see REFLECTIONS.

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.” For more thoughts on writing see REFLECTIONS.

“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. For more of my literary thoughts, see REFLECTIONS.

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. For more of my thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.

Reading a conversation between Christina Baker Kline and Lisa Gornick about “Historical Fiction” (Poets & Writers, September-October 2019, pp. 31-37), I agreed with Kline. Excerpts: “In writing about people from different eras, I’m less interested in verisimilitude than in exploring ways that the past resembles the present.” “There comes a point for me with any kind of research when I have to let go and trust that I’ve sufficiently internalized what I need to know. It’s like taking the tea bag out of the water when it’s steeped the right amount. Then it’s time to write.” “I don’t think novelists have a responsibility to be historically accurate. Fiction writers — people who make stuff up — can do whatever they choose. I need to allow myself the freedom in my own mind for flights of fancy.” Read more of my own thoughts about writing in REFLECTIONS.

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). Read more of my thoughts about writing in REFLECTIONS.