Each book is a new book

Michael Wood: Has writing fiction become easier for you over the years?

Paul Auster: No, I don’t think so. Each book is a new book. I’ve never written it before and I have to teach myself how to write it as I go along. The fact that I’ve written books in the past seems to play no part in it. I always feel like a beginner and I’m continually running into the same difficulties, the same blocks, the same despairs. You make so many mistakes as a writer, cross out so many bad sentences and ideas, discard so many worthless pages, that finally what you learn is how stupid you are. It’s a humbling occupation.

—interview

On writing as a physical experience

“[K]eyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page. Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.”

—Paul Auster (x)

Ah, yes, the joke

“Interestingly enough, the literary model I had in mind when I wrote those pieces [a collection of nonfiction stories called The Red Notebook] was the joke. The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count.”

—Paul Auster (x)

On rereading one’s own work in preparation for writing

George Plimpton: When you start on a day’s work, do you reread for a while, up to where you stopped the day before?

John Barth: Sure. It’s to get the rhythm partly, and partly it’s a kind of magic: it feels like you’re writing, though you’re not. The processes get going; the wheels start spinning.

—interview

A kind of passionate default

“Nearly every writer I know was going to be something else, and then found himself writing by a kind of passionate default. In my case, I was going to be a musician. Then I found out that while I had an amateur’s flair, I did not have preprofessional talent.”

—John Barth (x)

On writing without judgment

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain: Is being free of judgment important to you as a writer?

Louise Erdrich: It is one of the most important things.

—interview

(This seems to be in reference to Erdrich’s comment on James Welch that he “let his characters exist on the page free of judgment.”)

Love or hate, either will do

“He once said that to write well about something you had to either love it or hate it very much[.]”

—Nathaniel Benchley on John Steinbeck (x)

On the discipline of the written word

“The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. Of course, there are dishonest writers who go on for a little while, but not for long—not for long.”

—John Steinbeck (x)

It me

“I read in order to write. I read out of obsession with writing.”

—Cynthia Ozick (x)

On finding a voice by subtraction

“Sometimes, I think—it was certainly true for me—you can find a voice by subtraction as much as you can by addition. So if you write your kind of normal, you know, three hundred words in your quote unquote voice and you cut it down to one-fifty, sometimes you’ll find a trace of a voice there that you haven’t—that you actually can’t do organically.”

—George Saunders on The Shakespeare and Company Interview, March 30th, 2022