Writing - New York Times Essay Collection - Writers On Writing.pdf

Writers onWriting[ ]Excerpts fromThe New York TimesIntroduction by John DarntonOriginal Essays bySaul Bellow? Carl Hiaasen? Barbara KingsolverJoyce Carol Oates ? Scott TurowC O N T E N T SIntroduction by John DarntonHidden Within Technology’s Empire, A Republic of Letters by Saul BellowReal Life, That Bizarre and Brazen Plagiarist by Carl HiaasenA Forbidden Territory Familiar to All by Barbara KingsolverTo Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet by Joyce Carol OatesAn Odyssey That Started With ‘Ulysses’ by Scott Turowxi1581216Introduction John Darnton got the idea for the Writers on Writing series shortly after I decided to become –of all things– a writer. Actually, to be a stickler about it, I didn’t really decide to become a writer. As with many of life’s intriguing surprises, the decisions sort of crept up on me and made itself. I I had been thirty years in the newspaper business (where I still am). Much to that time had been spent abroad, covering Africa, Europe (East and West) and the Middle East. During that time I tried to craft my stories in what I thought of as writerly way, with plenty of what the foreign desk would call “color”. But despite the fact that I sent hundreds of thousands of words halfway around the world by every conceivable means, and despite the fact that those words were presented in configurations called stories, I didn’t conceive of myself as a writer. Like most foreign correspondents, I prided myself on getting the facts in a difficult situation, not on how those facts were arranged. Nor did I object when we called ourselves “hacks”, the self-denigrating term of preference, though in our heart of hearts when we said it, we didn’t believe it. (If you ever want to reach a report with a compliment, don’t tell him that he dug out all the facts or presented then fairly; tell him he writes brilliantly and then you’ll see his chest swell). Once I was invited to a writers’ workshop in Vermont and I experienced deep ambivalence: I was pleased at being on a panel with writers, but I couldn’t help feeling like a impostor. I began a novel, Neanderthal, during a stint as an editor in the New York office when I had some time on my hands. At first it was a diversion. I had read an article with some new information about those fascinating, extinct relatives of ours and I thought it would be fun to imagine a little band of them still existing in today’s world and to bring them into conflict with our own devious, predatory tribe. I lathered the story with a lot of science, as accurate as I could make it, and so what I was working on, while technically a novel, was really commercial fiction. That’s the term for a book that sells, and it’s easier to do because you don’t have to worry about being Faulkner every time you face a blank screen. Soon I discovered a little gimmick. One day I complained to a friend and author, a fellow “hack” from the Nairobi press corps, that the work was going slowly, that I had been writing only a thousand words a day. He sat up like a bolt, downed his scotch and peered at me through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “One thousand words a day! That’s terrific! Don’t you realize? That’s thirty thousand words a month. Three, four months and you’ve got a book.” I did the math; he was right. I set my computer so that I could knock off the moment I hit a thousand words. The device worked. A momentous task had been cut down to bite sizes. No longer was laboring to climb a mountain while staring at the snow-covered peak far above; instead I was climbing a single slope day after day until one day I would arrive at the summit. And one day I did. I began to feel like Molière’s iBourgeois Gentilhomme learning that he has been speaking prose all along. The thought struck me that maybe I am a writer after all. So, I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to commission a series by writers to let them talk about their craft? Maybe they would have similar tricks to impart. Maybe they could let some daylight in upon the magic. Where do they get their ideas? Or perhaps they should talk about literature. Or about reading–say, the general consensus that we are sinking into the abyss of an alliterate society. I drew up a list of writers that I wanted most to hear from (which was not the same, I was to learn, as a list of writers who might want to hear from me). I threw in some big names: Updike, Bellow, Doctorow. I added other names, younger writers, experimenters, radicals, miscreants. I went to PEN gatherings and moved from table to table signing up people like a Hollywood agent. I learned a number of things. Not all writers want to talk about what they do. A lot of them do not meet deadlines. And unlike reporters, they do not accept assignments gracefully–they actually have to want to do it. Beware of interrupting a writer in the middle of his working day: if he appears to want to remain on the line long after you do, that’s not a 。