Maybe it’s just the time of year—has anyone ever finished a project during the holiday season? Ever? In the history of time? But I’ve been doing some quality procrastination lately. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

On Monday, we talked about Mark Frauenfelder’s suggestion that being creative outside of your field can help you be more creative in your field. Now here are two other posts to make you feel less bad about procrastination—and maybe even make it helpful. Both are from Grub Street’s excellent blog, the Grub Street Daily. First, Katrin Schumann discusses the value of “cross-pollination” for creative writing:

On any given day, there’s an immense and colorful collage of informational detritus that collects in my brain. I seem to be drawn instinctively to what I need. In the past month I’ve read Lionel Shriver’s THE POST BIRTHDAY WORLD; Sue Miller’s THE GOOD MOTHER; the screenplay of CRASH; Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT!; Anthony Wolf’s GET OUT OF MY LIFE, But First Will You Take Me and Cheryl to the Mall?; Martha Stout’s THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR, blog posts by the brilliant Penelope Trunk (especially ones on sexual harassment). I’ve watched this riveting YouTube video and perused this hilarious site (though I haven’t yet figured out how blackface elves feature in my book). Oh yeah, and I’ve read 28 days worth of New York Times articles. Recently, I came across this pivotal one about teaching teens how to have good sex. Not to mention, I’ve watched some great movies (and some so-bad-it’s-fab TV).

Am I procrastinating? Yes, if you judge by my total word count.

But, no. I’m gathering up critical supplies for my death-defying trek into the wilderness. I’m embarking on an insane quest, and without those supplies, I’d be a goner.

And in a two-part series, Amy Marcott suggests ways to procrastinate that might help your work. Marcott offers sites chock-full of arresting images like Globe Genie, sites to get you thinking about language in new ways (like OneUpMe, where users try to best each other with similes), sites where you can digitally eavesdrop to help your dialogue (such as Overheard in Athens), and sites to explore characters and scenes, like Daily Mugshot. Part 1 and Part 2 offer lots more suggestions.

Do you have favorite sites for procrastinating—I mean, developing your fiction indirectly through online reading and research?

If you’re not a geek (and I use that term as a positive term), you may not know who Mark Frauenfelder is.  But you need not be a geek to learn from his recent post on LifeHacker.  Frauenfelder is editor of DIY-geek-tech MAKE Magazine, and two of his tips on accomplishing more in the day are useful to creative writers, too.

The first is a time-honored writing trick—he talks about going into “Robot Mode” when running down his to-do list:

I don’t think about how many items are on the list or how many I have left to accomplish. I just focus on the current task at hand. [...] Robot Mode helps me from feeling overwhelmed, which can happen if I am looking at a list of things that aren’t in any particular order. If I have to deal with an interruption (as we all do) I take care of it, and get back to my list.

You may not have a to-do list for your current work-in-progress, but focusing on one small segment of your piece helps you from feeling overwhelmed by what’s going to happen at the end of the story (or the book). Anne Lamott gives similar advice when she talks about looking at your story through a one-inch picture frame.

But most intriguing to me is Frauenfelder’s second tip:

There’s one item I add to my list every day that helps me get things done and keeps me happy: “15 minutes of non-digital creativity” [...] I find that taking 15 minutes to do something non-digital, like whittling a spoon, playing with clay, or sketching, is a great way to improve my mood and to make all my work-related stuff seem less urgent. I usually schedule it about halfway through the list, so that I have a treat to work towards in the early afternoon, when I’m starting to burn out.

A short break of non-verbal creativity might be a great way to break the three o’clock doldums that hit me in the middle of writing days: a chance to switch metaphorical gears and get new perspective on whatever scene I’m struggling with. Do you find that non-verbal creativity helps your writing? If so, what’s your favorite way to recharge?

• Author Caroline Preston is a great example of how non-verbal creativity can inspire your writing, as this reviewlet of her novel The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt shows. As part of her writing process,

  Preston put together hundreds of pages of hand-cut photos and captions to create the story of her 18-year-old heroine, who receives her father’s Corona typewriter and a blank scrapbook from her mother as a high-school graduation present. To assemble the materials that would make up Frankie’s life, Preston trolled antique stores and eBay for Bakelite bracelets and ticket stubs, a war medal and a flapper purse, a cigarette holder and a pair of driving glasses, bobby pins and fortune-telling cards. She put these items into a scrapbook: ‘over 600 pieces of 1920s vintage ephemera, and that’s a lot of stuff,’ she says.

So November is halfway over–you’re half done writing your novel for NaNaoWriMo, right?

Right?

Whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or not, there are always those days–or weeks, or months, or, let’s face it, years–when you just feel like you Cannot. Write. Anything. I don’t claim these are foolproof solutions, but here are my own personal tips to get started working again.

1. A journey of a thousand pages begins with opening your document.

Maybe it’s just me–but 90% of the time, just opening up the right file seems like a big step. I find a million other places to click: Facebook, the New York Times, that video of the sneezing baby panda for the hundredth time. And yet, once I suck it up and double-click that file and come face-to-face with my half-finished story, I usually find myself tinkering a little here, adding a little there… and lo and behold, an hour or two of work occurs.

If you have this problem too, here’s the fix: Set your computer to auto-open your documents when you turn it on. For Mac users, make your current short story/novel chapter into a login item (instructions here). And Windows users, just put your work-in-progress into the Startup folder (instructions here). Next time you start your computer, your documents will open automatically–and your own work-in-progress will be be right there, ready for you. No excuses!

2. Revising is always easier than writing.

I’m pretty convinced this is one of the great truths of the universe, right up there with Newton’s laws. It holds true no matter what you’re working on: application essays, term papers, dissertations, short stories, novels. You want to produce something great, but as soon as you think that, paralysis sets in. So focus on just getting something down on paper–anything. A paragraph. An outline. Keywords, a snatch of dialogue, a pertinent image. Remind yourself that you’re coming back later, and keep moving forward.

In Room to Write, a book of writing prompts, author Bonni Goldberg refers to this process as “making clay.” You can’t sit down and create a beautiful pot right off the bat–the first step is just making the clay. While writing the first draft of my novel, I pinned a sign above my desk that said “Fix that later.” You know what? It helped. And it’s still there.

This brings me to tip #3, which is:

3. Don’t re-read your own work–while writing.

It is so tempting, because reading is easier than writing. But re-read your drafts-in-progress too much, and your own words gain a feeling of finality, of inevitability. Of course that paragraph has to come after that one. Of course that scene has to end that way. And suddenly, you get stuck. You’re in an alley with no way out.

Only you know how much re-reading is too much, but for me, the process goes like this: open new document (see #1, above). Start reading from the beginning, and when you get to the bottom, start writing. Don’t look back–yet.

4. Embrace your fear of commitment.

Finally, there are those times when you know just what scene needs to come next, but you can’t get started. For me, this is often a risky scene: an argument, a love scene, a gesture of defiance, a moment of realization–a scene when the story pivots. Those scenes are hard to live through in real life, and they’re even harder to get down on paper.

Next time that happens, try this: open a new document, or get a blank sheet of paper (scratch paper works great for this). Copy the last few lines of your draft as a lead-in, and try writing the new scene on this blank canvas. If it doesn’t work, no problem. Delete the document–or recycle your scratch paper–and try again. Your original draft will be waiting patiently for you, unscathed by these false starts. 99% of the time, that frees you up, psychologically, to dive into murky waters or root through hard places or take whatever risks you need. (And when you’re done, maybe test that scene using the risky email test before you paste that bad boy into your draft.)

Okay, those are my tips for getting started when you’re sure writing is impossible. What are yours?

• FWR’s Founding Editor, Anne Stameshkin, offers a foolproof way to get yourself started when you’re feeling rusty–and we have lots more writing prompts to help you “Get Writing” in our archives.
• Valerie Laken describes a way around writer’s block and overcoming self-doubt: thinking of the writer as athlete and the teacher as a coach.
• More practical tips on writing a book.

Image: Write Place, Write Time

Write Place, Write Time offers a peek into different writers’ workspaces. Above, the writing spot of novelist Heidi Durrow.

Here’s the ridiculously cool workspace of writer Alan Heathcock (seriously, I can’t believe this exists–read the whole post; I promise it’s worth it):

Image: Write Place, Write Time

Heathcock writes:

My writing studio is a 1967 Roadrunner travel trailer that for most of its life was an Idaho State Police surveillance vehicle, and is now packed with books and trophies and random oddities. Inside, there’s old beautiful wood paneling, which smells like woods and feels like wood and feels cozy and connects me with reality. [...]

And here’s the somewhat unorthodox workspace of Elif Batuman:

Image via Write Place, Write Time

Batuman explains:

Finding the right workspace, for me, involved a lot of trial and error. In the end, this workspace turned out to be in some undergrowth.

It might not look luxurious, but there’s room for everything I need: a cup of tea, a reference volume or two, a spiral notebook and pen, and of course my IMAGINATION. I just scooch down there in the peat and let her go wild. [...]

Because most people tend to spend their time in cars and buildings and such, places like hedges and shrubbery are usually pretty underpopulated, so you can get plenty of peace and quiet. On the other hand, people walk past bushes all the time, having their conversations and arguments and whatnot—so if you get stuck for dialogue or characterization, why, all you have to do is sit tight and keep your ears open!

Now, get thee to thine own workspace, and have a productive weekend.

Since our youngest son entered kindergarten six years ago, May has become the golden month for me and my husband, who is also a writer and academic. Classes are over and the kids are still in school. In other words, long stretches of time in my studio with an endless cup of coffee and my work and a blissfully quiet house—even with my husband at work in the next room. May was how Teaching Creative Writing to Undergraduates: A Practical Sourcebook (Fountainhead) and Rethinking Creative Writing (Professional and Higher) got finished. Well, two Mays for the latter, but you get the point. This is not to say the rest of the year was not productive—just not as peaceful.

But I had reached a crossroads with my novel. I was on the precipice of the third draft, and I was pleased with how it was going, but I also knew it needed to cohere better. To flow from beginning to end like a great swath of sumptuous cloth instead of a patchwork quilt. To achieve this, it didn’t need an hour or two here and there, or even a regular three or four in glorious, much-anticipated May. It needed hours, many, many hours, of my undivided attention. In April, I started looking into writer’s colonies and was fortunate to find one that was only three hours away from me in central Arkansas: Dairy Hollow Writer’s Colony in Eureka Springs, the north central part of the state, near the Missouri border.

When I sent off my application, I had no idea what to expect if I got in. I had come to believe that the piecework nature of my life—a little writing here, a little reading there, teach a class here, meet with a student there—suited my temperament, which has always been somewhat, shall we say, distracted (my husband recently heard a radio show on adult ADD and has since given me an amateur diagnosis). And when the acceptance arrived, I really began to wonder. I worried. Would I be able to put all that time to good use? Or would I spend hours staring at the wall? Worse, what if I succumbed to the temptations of the artsy Ozark town—antique shops, galleries, restaurants—practically at my doorstep? Would the solitude be a blessing or a curse?

Day One: I am not worthy!

I’ve started out a little behind; it’s taken me longer than I thought to get here on those windy mountain roads, so I ended up missing my appointment with the Colony Director to pick up my key. Not a great first impression, but she seemed understanding when I called and has kindly arranged to have my key and orientation packet left in the front door box.

Picking up the packet, I meet writer Philip Finch, a very tall, serious-looking guy with an incongruously boyish face and short, graying brown hair who seems to be a bit distracted, or, rather in full writing mode. He’s friendly though. We chat for a few moments and then he directs me to my suite upstairs. Once a bed-and-breakfast run by food writer Crescent Dragonwagon and her writer-husband, the late Ned Shank, Dairy Hollow is a large house built into the side of a hill at the edge of the town of Eureka Springs. There are suites upstairs and down, but the entrance, as well as the kitchen, dining, and meeting areas, are all on the lower level—the bottom of the hill, so to speak. My suite is upstairs. And since there are no inside stairs that connect the rooms, I head up the hill, around the side of the house along a gravel path and a set of wooden stairs beautifully landscaped with wildflowers.

It turns out I have the culinary suite. Not the suite I was originally assigned, but I’ll take it. It’s gorgeous—full of light, courtesy of many windows and the skylight in the writing/living room, with a gourmet kitchen to boot. I make a mental note to ask, when I next talk to the director, if this is really the suite I’m supposed to have. That said, the key did unlock the door.

Apparently, the culinary suite is the one usually used by chefs and food writers. The only one of its kind at any writer’s colony in the US, according to an article left on the overstuffed sage green armchair in the work/sitting room. It was renovated in 2003 in conjunction with Renovation Style magazine, along with several major donors, most notably Kitchen Aid. The kitchen is large but not too large (apparently a cavernous kitchen is exhausting for a chef), with state of the art appliances, and a gleaming six-burner gas stove I am afraid to touch, all in a lovely pale blue and gray color scheme that is echoed throughout the suite.

After setting up my desk with everything I think I’ll need—computer, 1942 map of the five New York boroughs, a Time chronology of the 1940’s, and, in front of me, the timeline of the lives of all six of my major characters that has proved essential in the last several months—it’s time for dinner, in the main house below, so back I go, carefully, down the gravel path and the wooden stairs.

Once there, I spot Philip making a sandwich at the long, stainless steel counter that dominates the industrial kitchen. As he grabs a handful of homemade chocolate chip cookies to add to his plate, he explains that dinner on the weekends, as well as breakfast and lunch during the week, is catch as catch can, an amalgam of leftovers from previous meals, and sandwiches from the bread and cold cuts in the central kitchen. This is perfect for me. I’ve always imagined writers’ colonies a bit like “summer camp for grown ups,” including shared meals and the inevitable “in” groups and “out” groups that accompany them. A bit of an introvert, socializing at dinner is fine with me but it’s also enough. So I grab a quick dinner of peanut butter on toast and head back up to my suite to begin to make sense of my work and ready everything for the first full day tomorrow.

It’s evening now and the room is growing dark as the sun disappears behind the trees. It’s still hot and the street outside is quiet but for the occasional car that swoops around the curving road outside my window, the headlights briefly illuminating the pale, bottle-blue walls. After a quick call home to my husband to check in and let him know I arrived safely, I’m ready for bed and some solid reading time. To further my immersion in the time period I’m writing about (1920–1945 in the US and Germany, though mostly the US), I’ve brought two books set in the period: Ethan Canin’s Carry Me Across the Water, a past favorite, and Erika Dreifus’s Quiet Americans, which I’ve been looking forward to reading for months. But tonight, I don’t read for long; tired from the trip, I’m soon falling asleep. Though I’m excited to begin.

Day 2: The Real Test

The alarm goes off at 7 am and I put the routine I had planned the night before into action: make the coffee, shower and dress while it’s brewing, and be eating breakfast and enjoying my first cup by 7:15 am. Catching up on the world via the state newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, is usually part of my breakfast ritual but that’s not available here. I consider checking in to CNN.com for my daily dose of news (there is wireless here) but decide against it. If there is anything I need to know, my husband will call me. So I flip through a magazine with the first cup of coffee and head to my desk with the second.

With no one else to pour cereal and milk for, no cat litter to change—although I do make the bed; I’m an inveterate bed-maker at home—I’m at my desk by 7:45 am. Over the years, I’ve streamlined my morning routine from the hour and a half in those vain teenage years to about a half hour these days, enough to make myself presentable for work and the outside world and stave off the forces of gravity. But here I can get away with just a shower and some moisturizer since I’m not really going to see anyone, which suits me fine. And that seems the message from this suite anyway:  the only mirror here is a tiny one in the equally tiny bathroom that hangs about five inches above my head. If I want to apply make-up or style my hair, I have to stand on tip-toes to do it. I’m here to work, to write, not to preen.

Late in the morning, having kept myself at the desk by keeping the coffee coming—no big surprise there; Voltaire could have told me that—the Dairy Hollow director stops by with some news. The chef has taken ill, the result of her landlord’s overzealous use of mothballs, apparently. Philip and I are on our own for dinner that night, although the housekeeper will begin making our evening meals the following day. There is talk of taking us out for today’s dinner, but I am becoming so immersed in my work—I’m almost up to the first turning point, when Julia finds the letter—that I’d just as soon stay in and keep going. Besides, there’s the gourmet kitchen to consider; might as well use it.

So after a full, productive day of work, one filled with Flushing delicatessens and soda fountains that make the quaint, Ozark town I step out into seem shockingly modern, I celebrate by heading out to the local grocery store for provisions for breakfast and lunch the rest of the week and a very simple dinner tonight.

Day Three: Girls Who Read

The second day at my desk flies by, perhaps even faster than the first. I’m feeling good about the work—the novel is coming together just as I hoped and I feel almost breathless as I close in on the crucial scene with Julia on the docks, running toward the steamship to Bremerhaven. I’m getting so caught up in the story I feel as if I’m reading it for the first time.  I can’t help but think this bodes well, since I’ve been working on this novel long enough that it feels like part of my own history. Because it’s set in Queens, New York (a place I grew up in), and imagines a part of my great grandmother’s story that I always wanted to know more about, I suppose it is. But I’ve worked on it for so many years, in so many pieces, that I’ve often worried:  will others be as interested in this family lore as I am?  Although I’ve known about my step-great grandmother’s spectacular abandonment by her first husband since my own adulthood, and have subsequently wondered how she found love and trust again in my own great grandfather, I didn’t begin writing the book until about ten years ago, after most of the main characters were dead. And, despite re-imagining the story whole cloth (it even ends differently), I wanted to do its spirit justice.

Tonight’s dinner is in the main house at six. While the director has been extremely apologetic that we aren’t going to be the recipients of the usual chef’s talents due to the moth-ball incident, let me tell you, the housekeeper, who is from Prague, is a darn good cook. Our meal is a delicious, juicy baked chicken, with parsleyed potatoes and fresh corn on the cob.  It also gives me a chance to get to know Phillip Finch, the other writer here. Turns out he’s a journalist and crime writer of nonfiction who’s also published a novel and who’s here to work on his second. And although I’d been reluctant to leave my desk (a common theme of the week), it’s nice to sit at the long wood table and talk to another human being.  We even get into a little shop talk, which is welcome.

After dinner, I take a mile walk up the shady street, past grand Victorian painted ladies and smaller craftsman gems, into town and back. Strange that Eureka Springs is this lovely little artsy vacation town, green and shady, nestled in the backdrop of the Ozark hills but I’m spending most of my time holed up in my suite. As I stroll, looking forward to my evening reading upon my return to the suite, I realize that tonight I will probably finish Carry Me Across the Water. And because Quiet Americans is an even shorter book, it’s possible I might (Nook aside) run out of reading material before this retreat is over. As a writer and writing teacher, I’m also a word addict, but until I got here, I hadn’t realize how unsustained my reading was, how often interrupted. Sure, I carry the e-reader on me at all times; I find it difficult to pass even a brief period of unoccupied time without a book in front of my face. But that’s just what my reading experiences were: brief snatches of time that, while they added up, were in themselves disjointed, lacking in continuity and coherence. How could I write a sustained, enveloping body of prose if my own reading experiences had recently become (except for holiday breaks and the occasional vacation) staccato and disconnected? Here, the lack of distractions, the lack of cable, regular internet and especially, for me, of radio (I am an utter NPR fanatic) has returned me to the kind of long hours of reading bliss I hadn’t experienced since I was a teenager. [Side note: no one invokes this phenomena better than Michelle Slatalla in her New York Times essay “I Wish I Could Read Like a Girl”.]  Fortunately, the shelves of the “Culinary Suite” are well stocked with food memoirs that beckon if my own library runs out.

Day Four:  Finding Extra Hours

Swimmer

It was another good day. I am about two thirds through the novel revision and realizing another benefit to this retreat is that unlike my typical writing spaces—home, office, work, even hotels—there’s no gym access here. At home I try to fit an hour workout into most days; a lifelong habit that seems necessary if I want to stay healthy and productive. But since I’m only here for a week, I decide to ditch the daily workout. (I know, what a sacrifice.) As beneficial as it is—usually—a workout is a major interruption. It’s been a hot week here too, close to 100 every day, and one thing you learn quickly in the South is that if you want to maintain any semblance of energy during the day, you’d better make your forays into the un-airconditioned world few and far between. Not a problem here. I stay in the suite from rising until dinnertime, keeping my energy levels nice and high.

Another delicious dinner tonight of chicken pot pie (my husband will be jealous; it’s one of his favorite meals) and more time to get to know Philip. He’s from Kansas but has spent some time in Arkansas and we have a few friends in common; the Mid-South/Mid-West literary world is not terribly big. He mentions tonight, too, that it’s nice that, for whatever reason, there are only two of us here right now, eliminating any of the posturing or position jockeying he imagines might take place during social gatherings at more populated writer’s colonies. Truth be told, my knowledge of writer’s colonies comes from stories of Cheever’s infamous drinking and debauchery at Yaddo, so I too am relieved. The absence of pressure to be hip or entertaining gives me only that much more energy to lavish on the novel.

Day Five: There’s No Escaping It

A narrative problem arose today, around mid-morning. During the year, when I am at my desk and hit a bump in the writing road, it’s easy to say, “Well, it’s almost time for that conference call/dentist appointment/committee meeting (ugh!) anyway—let me put this aside for now and think on it.” And while “thinking on it” often does work for me in my regular life, here, with nothing else to turn to, no other excuses, I’ve also learned that so does powering through, staring stubbornly at the screen until the next line finally comes along to get you back in the groove. So I sat there. I stared. I drank more coffee. And eventually, reached a solution. Julia would take her time with her big decision, even taking a tour of Calvary cemetery as she considered her options.

My suite looks out onto the main street and I’ve been keeping the blinds on the workroom window wide open most days to take advantage of the natural light. Today I realize maybe that isn’t such a great idea. Late in the afternoon, not long after I’ve imagined Julia eerily along at Calvary for the first time, there’s a knock at the door. I answer cautiously to find a rather disheveled-looking young man on the doorstep.

“Is this the writer’s colony?” He wants to know.

“Yes,”

“Can I come in for a while to rest and get out of this heat?”

Can this stranger come in? Um, I don’t think so.

“Actually, no,” I tell him. “I’m working right now. But I’d be happy to bring you a big glass of water.”

“No, thanks,” he mutters, a little exasperated. “I’ve got water.”

Okay, then. Heart pounding, I close the door, checking twice that it’s locked and my cell phone is close by. Disheveled guy then proceeds to sit at the foot of the hill across the road, so that he’s in effect staring into my picture window as I write, or try to anyway. I’m nervous and pretty annoyed at the interruption. Closing the blinds seems a little combative but finally, I do, making a mental note to keep them closed and counsel the next inhabitants of the suite to do the same. I guess I was a bit naïve to think I could allow myself to be on display like that. If this had been a story it would not end here, with the disheveled young man receding with the flick of the blinds. Fortunately, it’s not. The fictive world is at my desk, and I happily return to Julia and 1945 New York, where presumptuous young men don’t knock on writer’s doors.

The only requirement of the colony—other than writing—is that recipients give a reading of their work in-progress. Tonight is the monthly Dairy Hollow Poet’s Luck, where members of the Eureka Springs literary community gather to share work and food with each other in the dining room and meeting area, a great mission-style room capacious enough to comfortably hold about twenty-five people and a baby grand piano in the corner. Philip and I are both scheduled to read. Everyone is kind and welcoming but I feel a little odd at first, like an island among all these groups of people who clearly know each other so well. I read in the local paper there’s a serious problem with the deer population invading the town, so I ask some of the residents about it as a way of making conversation.

It’s nice to see such a large group enjoying literature and writing and just sharing. Even though this group is larger, there is still very little posturing, just a celebration of the word. Turns out my disheveled young man had a reason for showing up earlier; he was meeting up with a young woman he’d heard would be here at the Poet Luck, an ethereal young thing named Miranda, “after Shakespeare’s Miranda,” she tells me as she shakes my hand.  She stands up to read a handwritten poem that rather amazes me in its mature use of language and its cadence. There are several wonderful readers, including another young woman, a writing and linguistics major at a college in New Mexico, who gets up to do some slam poetry, an older woman who reads a haunting story about a girl in a mental institution and a playwright who reads an excerpt from a very funny southern play that will be read next week at the Hollow. Wish I could be there to hear the whole thing. Finally the evening ends with, of all things, a ponytailed man taking a seat at the baby grand and belting out a a satirical and sorrowful song about Michael Jackson’s death that he wrote himself. There are a huge number of ponytailed men in Eureka Springs and they all look a little alike—kind, gentle, with those frizzy salt and pepper ponytails. Sort of like the boys who slouch in the back of my classroom with their baseball caps low on their heads; it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart.

Day Six:  Finding the Rhythm

Even just a week of sustained attention to writing can bring you in tune to your natural bodily working rhythms. Though I’ve been driving hard here—really hard—I’ve actually been getting a solid night’s sleep, at least seven or eight hours. Writing about nine hours a day, I’ve learned, seems to require that kind of nightly restoration. Today, moreover, as my stay is ending, I write for about four and a half hours in the morning and, as I do so, realize I am coming within shouting distance (another five to seven hours) of the novel’s end. I know I need to bring to those hours my highest level of energy, my very best game. So I stop, have a quick lunch and then take, of all things, a nap! I lie down in my tiny little bedroom, on my cozy little single bed, and close my eyes without even setting an alarm; buoyed by a kind of preternatural confidence that I will wake up exactly when I need to, ready to see my project through to the end. Fifty minutes later, that is exactly what happens.

I already knew this—all writers do—but in attending to the novel for sustained periods of time, I also regularly achieved “flow,” the artist’s mecca of well being in which ideas, characters, plot twists, sentences, words and phrases arrive unbidden that would not have come any other way. Of course this happens at other times during the year too, as long as I’m doing the work, ass in chair, as they say. But it seems to have happened a lot this week. The only other experience I can liken it to is National Novel Writing Month, which I participated in in November 2009 and which I highly recommend to students and peers alike. By committing to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days, even though your daily writing stints may only be two or three hours, you are also committing to walking around in the world of your novel—consciously and subconsciously—pretty much 24-7 for an entire month. And walking around in that world will work wonders to bring about epiphanies and discoveries about the piece that simply would not have come about without the artificial environment NaNoWriMo creates. Writing for eight or nine hours a day for a week or two weeks or a month or two months away from all distractions and commitments works pretty much the same way. The novel has come together exactly as I hoped it would.

Now that the week is behind me, I’m here to say that it was a game changer. I learned a great deal about me and my life as a teacher-writer. It is no small thing to come face to face with one’s work with no distractions. And while it is not something I could do on constant basis—neither my temperament nor the chosen realities of my life would permit it—it is something I plan to incorporate into my writing year from now on.

Further Links and Resources

Forget New Year’s Day: I think fall might be the time that writers make all their resolutions. As the summer winds to a close, students prepare for a new school year. Teachers polish old syllabi and draw up new ones. Publishers, editors, and agents return from the Hamptons. And writers everywhere make themselves promises to buckle down and get back to work.

If you’re one of the latter, you may find these practical tips on writing a book helpful. Culled from 22 established writers, the list has lots of ideas for making THIS the year you finish your book at last. Most of the authors write nonfiction, but 99.9% of their advice relates to fiction as well. A sampling:

Carl Zimmer: Be ready to amputate entire chapters. It will be painful.

August Kleinzahler: I find it helpful sometimes — and still to my surprise — trying to explain to someone what it is I’m trying to write about, usually someone bright but in a different intellectual zone, and not a writer. Or, likewise, in a letter or email to such a person.

Barry Boyce: You’re better off than you think, because you’ve done this before, just not in as large a format. Almost every technique and skill you’ve used to structure and tell a story at feature length scales to book length. So, let go of the excess anxiety about never having done this before.

Sylvia Boorstein: Do not open email until 5PM on any weekday or other day when i expect to be writing much of the day.

And if you’ve been taking a break from said book all summer and need to regain momentum, How Not to Write has six steps to return to writing. The first? Show up.

1. Show up – This is the first step. You must appear at the desk daily. You know this. You also know it is not optional. There is nothing more important than this.

Anyone out there resolving to start—or finish—a book this fall? Tell us in the comments. After all, stating your goals publicly is often the first step to achieving them…

• Technology is your friend: learn more about writing-related apps and programs right here in the FWR blog archives.
• Can’t get to work at all because you’re beating yourself up for “wasting” all summer? This may help.

It’s easy to be hard on yourself when you’re a writer. But does beating yourself up really help? For 99.9% of us, the answer is no.

How do you learn to go easier on yourself? The Rejectionist is here to help:

So imagine you have a new puppy, and your new puppy does the things that new puppies do, which are: pee on the floor, eat your favorite shoes, poop in your laundry hamper, chew on your plants, chase the cat. Right? Bad things. Now, how do you deal effectively with the misbehaviors of the new puppy, which does not know any better, and is only doing the things that puppies have done since the dawn of puppy-time, when new puppies chewed up their cave-person’s best bow and arrow or whatever? Do you shout BAD DOG BAD DOG BAD DOG at the new puppy over and over again? Do you kick the puppy? Smack the puppy on its little puppy-nose with a rolled-up newspaper? No! Because YOU, Author-friend, are not an asshole, or else you would not be our Author-friend! You speak GENTLY BUT FIRMLY to the puppy. You work with the puppy where the puppy is at. You reward appropriate puppy behaviors with treats and happy noises! You pet the puppy! You explain the rules to the puppy in a clear and intelligible fashion!

Do you see where she’s going here? Head on over to the full post at The Rejectionist for a helpful list of “brain management routines” to help you train your puppy-brain into better behavior. Do it because it’s Friday. Do it because you, like all writers, deserve a little self-forgiveness.

After all, Van Booy reasoned to himself, the previous year, short story-phenom Jhumpa Lahiri had captured the O’Connor Award for her collection, Unaccustomed Earth. That, he concluded, was the kind of magnificent story collection capable of capturing the O’Connor Award, which at 35,000 euros is the world’s largest short story prize. And besides, the literary chatter was that the only other American book to make the O’Connor Award shortlist was the favored winner: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower.

And then came the awards ceremony.

Patrick Cotter, the Artistic Director of the Munster Literature Centre, the organization that oversees the O’Connor Award, took the mic: “Unusual for a work of serious literature, this book won with its consistently positive and optimistic approach to examining the travails of human experience.” The winning book was, he continued, “full of the most exquisite insights, aphoristic without ever seeming like mere conveyances for ideas.” He was, of course, describing Van Booy’s Love Begins in Winter.

Van Booy reacted to the short story prize by hunkering down to work on his first novel. In 2010, Harper Perennial brought out three nonfiction philosophy titles edited by Van Booy: Why We Need Love, Why We Fight, and Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter. Earlier this month, they released his first novel, Everything Beautiful Began After.

In the elegant, seemingly Old World prose Van Booy has become revered for, the novel traces three lives set against the Mediterranean heat of Athens: those of the drunken but brilliant American George, the searching French artist Rebecca, and the British archaeologist Henry. New York Times best-selling author and National Book Award-finalist Andre Dubus has called the novel, “A powerful meditation on the undying nature of love and the often cruel beauty of one’s own fate.” As Van Booy worked through the final stages of Everything Beautiful Began After, we conducted an email conversation about his work, the writing craft, and, of course, cufflinks.

Joshua Bodwell: How do you write–with a computer or by hand?

Simon Van Booy: I can’t write very fast, but I can type like mad, so fast in fact, that in full swing, I’m like a violent, out-of-control secretary. I write poems and short pieces with a 1956 Remington—typewriter, not electric razor.

What are your writing habits like?

I must have tea and absolute quiet. No telephones, lawnmowers, leaf-blowers. Certain pieces of music also help my mind slow to the speed at which I like to write. I also like to be fully dressed—even with sock garters, and my writing room must be extremely tidy and clean. I have to feel very much in control.

Do you use any writing tricks, such as Hemingway’s old advice that he stopped each day when he knew what was going to happen next?

That’s interesting. Did you know he also stood up when he wrote dialogue? I definitely stop for the day at a high point, because if I write until I’m exhausted, I can’t work the next day, or I don’t have enough energy for the people I love in my life.

You have spoken and written at length about your enjoyment of writing in hotels and rented cottages. How do you think this affects your writing?

I have to be alone to finish a book—or with someone who won’t demand any emotional involvement from me as I live through the final emotions of my characters. So I really need solitude to work. I have to insist on it, actually. The thought of it terrifies some people, but I look forward to it like a cream cake I can bury my face in.

Do you talk about what you’re writing while you’re working on it?

Never. I’m very private about my work until it’s finished. It’s like a secret I have to keep. The novel I just handed in [Everything Beautiful Began After] will be out in July 2011. I took some big chances with structure, but I think writers have to take chances in order to continue developing, and to maintain the excitement of being a writer—published or not.

Are you private about work-in-progress for superstitious reasons, or are you merely worried that someone else’s ideas will sully yours?

I’m a Pisces and we never believe in superstition. I just worry that if I tell someone about what I’m working on, they will unknowingly destroy it before it’s fully formed. It’s like asking someone to look after a spider web for you.

What do you do after you finish a first draft?

I leave it for a few weeks. I go back to it with the hope that the characters will still be breathing. Sometimes, however—when I return to a story, not only are my characters breathing, they’re drunk, or kissing or trying to escape… and then it’s a matter of control.

One of my literary heroes, Barbara Wersba, said that you never finish a book, only abandon it.

Tell me about your drafting and revision process. How many drafts of a short story do you typically work through before feeling like you are complete?

The better the short story, the fewer the drafts. I think my favorite poems were just one draft, with a few tweaks after perhaps. After too many drafts of a story I start thinking about electrotherapy treatments (for the characters, not me).

You mention your poetry. How does poetry (be it yours or other authors’) affect your prose, and vice versa?

Poetry is like a jolt of lightning to prose. Poems always inspire me to do something, even if it’s to sit in one place and watch pigeons for an hour. Being alone helps me realize the value of life and others.

As a writer with poetic instincts—for lack of a better term—are you conscious of balancing your lyricism with the narrative that propels your stories?

Yes. I have to keep the story moving, despite wanting to stop and pool in places—I have to keep everything gushing, even on—past the end of the story, so it can flood the life of the reader.

Do you think stories are discovered or created?

I think tone is discovered by being felt, and then everything is built around that.

The Secret Lives of People In Love, your first collection, fit eighteen stories into 154 pages. Your second collection, Love Begins in Winter, told just five stories in 226 pages. Tell me about the evolution in your writing between those two collections.

What an interesting question. But this difference is something that appeared organically. I also realized that it’s often necessary to tell the story by what you don’t say, rather than what you do.

While you were working on your first novel, your collection Love Begins in Winter won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. How did winning that award, and knowing that it might bring the novel more attention, affect you?

Worldly success can be quite destructive to the creative process. I have to disconnect myself from the idea of what people will think of something if I’m to write anything of sincerity and worth. On the other hand, going to Cork and winning that prize was surprising and wonderful. I’m so deeply, sincerely grateful to them for organizing it, and for Cork City Council for putting forward the prize money, which is an enormous amount of money. It was an honor to win, as the other short-listed writers were all so talented. The people of Cork really care about storytelling—it’s like food to them. That’s very exciting, especially for the children of Cork. I’ve been back twice already. I just like to wander there and meet people. It’s truly a city of light, and I think it’s certainly a place I could live.

In describing Love Begins in Winter, the jury of the O’Connor Award noted: “Unusual for a work of serious literature, this book won with its consistently positive and optimistic approach to examining the travails of human experience.” How do you arrive at such an approach?

I think just go for a walk, chat to people, learn to forgive (not only others but yourself), and you’ll see what I mean.

Are you ever conscious of your reading audience when you’re writing?

Yes. I love my readers, I adore them, and they know this. Though I must add that I always write what I personally think works—and not ever what I think someone else will like or approve of.

The author Thomas E. Kennedy once mused: “Why is it that all our petty misfortunes cast into words become a celebration?” That line made me think of your work.

He’s a good writer, isn’t he? Yes, very good, I think. For me, I think words allow us to hold hands with strangers. They remind us that one person’s experience is everyone’s. With that in mind, to love another is to love one’s self. To insult or injure another is to insult or injure one’s self. I read somewhere that we live solely to overcome the illusion of our separateness. Stories and language allow us to live without living, and to die without dying, which is why I think the modern Holy books are rooted in language and not pictures.

You were born in London and raised in Wales. Today, you live in New York City. Do you consider yourself an expatriate? Do you think that has affected your work?

Yes. I keep moving around. My parents are the same way. I feel like I’m on vacation all the time; it’s quite nice. Living abroad is almost like hiding from time, from culture, from one’s own narrative.

Your soon-to-be-released novel is entitled Everything Beautiful Began After. Tell me about that title. How did you arrive at it?

It’s about learning to love when everything around you feels ruined.

How did your process of writing short stories and writing a novel differ?

For me, a novel is like a city coming to life around you—but a world one can never really inhabit. A short story is a late-night conversation with a stranger in the park: very immediate, intimate, fleeting. Writing a novel is different. It’s really all inspired revision. Did you know that the John Harrison clocks from the early 1700s required about eight hours to disassemble and about the same time to reassemble? Sixteen hours of non-stop labor all to make one tiny adjustment. Writing a novel is worse. It has to become an obsession—and where would we be without Harrison’s clocks? “Lost at sea,” I hear you murmur.

Tell me about point of view in your writing: do the stories arrive in your mind with point of view, or do ideas arrive that you then push toward a point of view that suits the narrative?

This is something the characters control. Varying degrees of intimacy are afforded writers by the various points of view at their disposal. My characters seem to choose the one that allows them to interact with the reader in the most efficient way for the purposes of their particular story.

Ever change a story’s point of view while in the midst of writing it?

Another interesting question, Joshua. I don’t think so, though I generally write endings first.

What is your favorite point of view to write in, and why?

At the moment second person, because I’ve explored it with such interest in my novel. But they are all so wonderful and unique, aren’t they?

When discussing the origins of your stories, you once told The Herald newspaper in Scotland that they “develop out of a sense of compassion. The person who writes these stories—not me—treats everyone with importance, as if they’re the last person on Earth.” Can you expand on that?

I think we’re waking up from something. Universal compassion is a grand part of our next phase as human beings and is slowly being unveiled, like a piece of art we’ve been working on for centuries, but which we are yet to see in its entirety.

Have you read T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”? One of my favorite lines is: “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire / Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

Both author images credit: Wang Yin

Are these long-held beliefs, or do you think being a father has opened this vein of optimism within you?

Despite efforts to the contrary, these beliefs won’t let go of me.

How do you maintain such beliefs when your life has been struck by such tragedy? [Van Booy’s wife died suddenly of an undiagnosed disorder—a suspected case of Marfan syndrome—when his daughter Madeleine was just three years old. Van Booy explored the loss in a tender essay called “Raising a Princess Single-Handedly” for the New York Times’ Modern Love column.]

I always try and remember that no matter what happens, there is a core that is myself, that is unbreakable; a place of light that cannot be diminished by how I perceive events in the world. It’s a place beyond the mind, and it’s where my stories come from. This place of light is exactly what my new novel is about.

There is a beautiful sense of morality in your writing. Is that cultivated, or just organic?

It’s something my characters seem to already possess, or find later on in their stories. I’ve often wondered if there isn’t some sort of universal morality, such as the one Schopenhauer touches on in one of his essays…

I read a line by the novelist David Mitchell the other day and, again, it made me think of your work: “The soul is a verb, not a noun.” What do you make of that?

I like that. It reminds me that whenever I run (sadly, about once every five years), I envision my own literal death. This sharpens my mind and helps me focus on what I love most about life and what I really want from life. It’s nice to do something with the body—to really use the body for what it was meant to do. Amidst the violence of exercise, it’s a relief to find a still center that is the real me.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters in literature?

Sir Gawain, Margaret Schlegel, Jay Gatsby, Prometheus, Fagin, Silas Marner, Anthony Blanche, Moses, Buddha, Paddington Bear, Jean Valjean, Estragon…dear me, I have a list and it’s long isn’t it?

Put it this way: if any of these characters were in hospital, I’d visit them with grapes and magazines, help them make phone calls, check e-mail, et cetera.

Okay, you’re known as something of a bon vivant, so let me get your thoughts a couple of not-so-literary implements: Cuff links? Pocket square?

Cuff links, yes. Pocket square—only after 6:00PM.

Further Links and Resources

Gaitskill is also the recipient of many literary accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a PEN/Faulkner Award nomination for Because They Wanted To. In 2005, her novel Veronica was a National Book Award nominee, as well as a National Book Critics Circle finalist. She is currently a 2010 Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library.

In February of 2011, Mary Gaitskill returned to her Alma Mater as part of the University of Michigan’s Zell Visiting Writers Series. I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon in her company in Ann Arbor, including a lunch with MFA students, a roundtable discussion in the Hopwood Room, and this one-on-one conversation. Listening to Mary in person had a similar effect to rereading her books: I walked away from each a wiser woman, with a deepened understanding of and curiosity for the world I’m traveling through and the people I’m passing by.

Interview:

Emily McLaughlin: Because we’re sitting here in Angell Hall, at the University of Michigan, my first question is this: Have you gone back to read your winning undergraduate Hopwood Manuscript in the Hopwood Room?

Mary Gaitskill: I have. It was a few years ago. I think my story “The Woman Who Knew Judo” holds up pretty well as a young story. The others are a bit embarrassing. But that’s okay.

I went back and read it. The three stories had all of your trademarks: the steady hand of your sentences, the humor, the intelligence. Your voice and style were very apparent. Did you try to publish those stories?

I tried to publish “The Woman Who Knew Judo” and got nowhere with it.

Are you able to remember writing the initial drafts and where you were emotionally at that time?

Well, it was a terrible time. I remember that. I entered the Hopwood a number of times and didn’t win.

Wow.

They were probably bad stories. I don’t remember them anymore. Though there was a story of mine, “Something Better Than This,” that was published [in the late 1970s] in a small Canadian magazine called Branching Out. An online publication called Fictionaut recently approached me about republishing that first story of mine and so I gave it to them. It’s actually pretty good. It’s young, certainly not how I would write now. A lot of the stories I wrote in Ann Arbor were really bad. I try to remember this when I’m teaching because most of my stories would not have stood out to me at all as a teacher. They don’t show exceptional promise. What they do show is someone who is aware of style, and most students are not. Literary style is quite important to me; it’s not superficial, it’s the means through which your content becomes known. I clearly had a sense of style and was trying to work with it. But other than that, I wrote pretty average undergraduate work.

Do you remember any point or instant in your life when you felt you had something special? That you were gifted?

I knew that writing was the only thing I cared about outside of my personal life. I knew it was the only thing I was good at. I did briefly experiment when I was a teenager with painting. I left home at an early age and there was simply no way I could afford painting. I couldn’t afford canvas and paint and they were bulky. For writing I only needed a notebook and pen. I didn’t even have a typewriter. So that was part of it. But I wasn’t told I was talented very much. In fact, when I was here there was a particular contest which, unlike the Hopwood, you needed the recommendation of a professor to even enter. So I went to my creative writing teacher and he said, “No, you’re not good enough.” And I said, “Oh, okay.”

Did you have any contact with him in the future?

Yeah. When I came to read here the first time, back in ‘89, he was elderly at that point, and he actually came in a wheelchair. He was clearly so happy I had done well. He wasn’t trying to be mean, he was simply telling me the truth. He didn’t think I was good enough.

There are so many students who want to write. As a teacher, do you ever believe in telling any of them, “Maybe you should try something else, this isn’t for you”?

No, I’ve never said that because I don’t think I know that. As a teacher, you just don’t know enough, especially if you are only with them for a semester. Someone can write twenty bad stories and then they write a good one; people can potentially develop very fast when they’re young. On top of that, my idea of what’s good or not may be irrelevant—a lot gets published that I don’t like at all.

Avery Hopwood

Also, I was going to mention, the first couple of times I entered the Hopwood, I wrote stories about strippers. I wrote some family stories, too, but with the stripper stories, I think people thought they were nonsense because how could I possibly know what I was talking about? So I began to look at the Hopwood stories that won. I went to the Hopwood room and I saw what they were about. I actually calculated. I thought, these middle-aged judges aren’t going to want to read something from a little girl writing about strippers. The stories that won were about wholesome families, childhood realizations, and moments of truth. I thought, “I can do that.” [Laughter.] What’s funny too is one of my stories about a bunch of strippers was based on an event that actually happened. I kept that one, so I can objectively say it’s bad, artistically it stinks, but the dialogue and events were real. I workshopped this story and everyone thought it was unbelievable, especially the teacher who kept saying he couldn’t believe strippers would say these things or act this way.

When did you first publicly come out to the literary world about the stripping?

Immediately. I was asked to write a biographical statement, and I just included it. And, of course, that was really seized upon. It was probably a little stupid of me.

Do you think your career would have gone differently if you were not so forthcoming?

I think it would have been better if I had not stated it as one of the first things I said about myself when I appeared. I think it would’ve been fine to talk about as time went on. A friend had said to me, “Wait, you can talk about that when you’re fifty.” And I should’ve listened. But in the long run, I don’t think it mattered that much. Now, it’s almost become accepted. But at the time, it was still a bit taboo. Yet I knew so many women and girls who did things like that so I didn’t think it should be this horrific secret.

Are you able to rattle off all of your stories and character names?

No. Well, I haven’t written that much, actually. I’m not that prolific. I can remember all of my stories, but I often don’t remember the point of view or names or what I intended. The things I was thinking when I wrote them are harder to remember.

Do your characters in various stories overlap to you? Are they a few characters voices filling out all of the stories? Do you think that matters?

I think all writers have their themes and characters that one way or another they return to and develop. If you look at Nabokov, how many times does he have an older man and a bewitching young girl? Not in every book, but in many. Look at Bellow’s vulgarity-beleaguered heroes, or Updike’s sexy family men. With Virginia Woolf, many of her books are about this sort of switching of consciousness and taking a very small moment and unraveling it as far as it will go.

It seems fitting to talk about your story “College Town,” which appears in Don’t Cry, since we’re here in Ann Arbor. You originally wrote this story around the time you were writing “Orchid,” which has similar characters and was collected in Because They Wanted To. What was it like to go back and work on “College Town” more than twenty years later? Does writing ever get harder?

Surprisingly easy in that case; I didn’t even have to rewrite it that much. I edited it more than I rewrote it because there was some clunky stuff in there. It was a fairly simple process. However, in answer to the question, does writing ever get harder, yes, it does. It never stops being hard and if you try something you haven’t done before, that likely will be harder than before too, because there’s nothing to fall back on.

In your story “The Agonized Face,” did you feel you were defending anything? What was your intention for the reception of that story? It’s such a complex story.

I was trying to hit as many facets of it that I could. It’s based on an experience I had at a festival in Toronto. The whole thing struck me as so crazy; it was kind of a media bazaar—which was wonderful in a way; God bless Toronto for giving that much media attention to writers—which attached personas to people in a way that was unintentionally grotesque and which then got amplified by people semi-consciously trying to live up to these images. If your persona gets very intensely attached to (ahem) subjects like prostitution and violence, or, say, war, well, those subjects arouse a lot of emotion. About the story, I had no intention for how it would be received because I can’t control that. In terms of myself, I was trying to comically come at it from as many angles as I could.

The feminist author in the story has obviously affected the reporter, in that she made her stop and formulate her own opinions, which cleverly forces the reader to think, “What do I really make of this situation?” Was this a device? Were you intending to get readers thinking about feminist issues?

I never think about provoking thought, but I’m glad if I do. I try not to think about readers because if I do, I get confused. I get out of my own perception in a way. I had a concern about that story, that the narrator sounded too crazy. It turns out people didn’t feel that way about her, and I’m glad. But while feminism was certainly part of it, I was focused on the media madhouse aspect more—how feminism is perceived has to do with that too!

Did you give her a daughter to…

…to make her normal? Yes! Also, having a daughter makes the subjects of prostitution and rape far more loaded for her.

Have you ever received backlash from mothers? Is that another reason you gave this narrator a daughter?

The daughter in the story gives the narrator a kind of grounding, because otherwise she seemed like a disembodied voice. I wanted to give some sense of where she was coming from, and why these things meant so much to her. Otherwise she just seemed like a maniacal talking voice. I would not say I’ve felt a backlash. At times I have felt—this is very vague—but I have felt that women with children sometimes consider me outside the realm of the normal. That they might read me for entertainment, but that they can’t relate to me. I don’t know how true that is, but occasionally I’ve felt it.

How do you carry the influence of alcohol so well through that story and others? Your story “Turgor” also comes to mind.

I’ve been drunk! Part of the thing about making the narrator of “The Agonized Face” drunk, too, was because I was afraid of her sounding nutty. Personally, I can think that way without being drunk, but I thought in this case the reader would cut her more slack for thinking kooky while drunk.

It also generates more empathy for her.

Yeah. Also, she never gets a chance to be out in the world. So she’s a bit out of her comfort zone and thinking out of the box already. Plus feeling a bit defensive. I’ve only once actually written something when I was drunk. Normally, I think it’s a bad idea. You can’t think as clearly. I was at a writing colony, and they are wonderful, but they can also be kind of scary, because you feel like, Okay, I’m here, I’ve got to get work done. I’d gone three days without being able to work and I was getting into a complete panic. So one night after dinner, I drank too much and I stomped back to my cabin and thought, “Goddamnit, I will write!” And actually, it wasn’t bad. I used it in Veronica. The character is kind of drunk, she breaks up with this guy and meets him at the benefit, and he’s there and they go in the bathroom and have sex, and he takes her home in a cab and hands her her underpants.

That’s a good tidbit of knowledge. Another thing you do so well is create these sort of invisible plotlines. Sort of like a good drink. You don’t really taste it until it hits you. So many of the shifts in your stories are internal. For example, Dolores in “College Town” just sits and sorts through rantings and flashbacks. How do you squeeze a plot out of this? Do you do this by keeping the reader wondering, “What will be revealed here that only Mary Gaitskill can reveal at the end of a story?” Sort of like dangling your carrot?

[Laughter.] Well, actually, I don’t like it that I write so much like that. I need to develop a stronger ability to be in the world of action. Interiority is something you cannot do in a film, so it’s a strength for a fiction writer, but I think you can lean on it too much. It works beautifully sometimes, but I think I need to develop an ability to develop action more.

The major shift in “College Town” is that Dolores can’t orgasm in the beginning and then at the end, she can.

That’s big! [Laughter.] Though I wouldn’t say it’s all about that. She’s making peace with the hell in her, integrating her past and present through the daily things she experiences through the people around her. Also integrating how she is privately with how she is publicly, through very quotidian experiences.

Yeah. You’re an expert technician, able to clearly sustain a reader’s attention paragraph to paragraph, line by line, through darting thoughts, time jumps, musings. Has this always come naturally or do you work at that?

It comes naturally and I work at it. The natural part is in how I perceive; the work comes in conveying that non-verbal perception in words. It was difficult in Veronica because there were so many time jumps. It was almost like a palimpsest, rather than flashbacks—it was like one time bleeding through another. Sometimes I changed the time frame by decades in one paragraph or even in one sentence. But mostly, it’s not so difficult. “The Girl on The Plane”: line breaks. In that story, that’s enough to let you know you’ve changed the time frame.

How do you decide which line of dialogue a character will speak or say? They could often be interchanged. Do you switch thoughts and dialogue in revision? Does it come organically as well?

I honestly don’t recall that. I think its usually pretty clear to me, though sometimes I go over and think, “No, that’s enough to keep it as a thought, the character wouldn’t say that.”

I would love to see your characters speak to each other in their intelligent, electric way on the stage. Have you ever written a play?

I tried. I was terrible at it.

Do you have any interest in writing a screenplay?

I don’t think I’m any good at it. Its such a different technique. Yes, I’m good with dialogue, but I also rely very heavily on interiority, and a lot of how I make things happen is by describing things in the room. I did write a screenplay once. I was commissioned to write it. Part of the reason it didn’t work was it wasn’t my idea. I took it because I needed the money, but I thought it was really a screwball idea. It started with a gang rape. It was supposed to be this working-class student at Harvard and an upper-class guy falls for her but he’s embarrassed by his love for her. His evil friend lures her to the frat house and they rape her. This is an early scene. We are supposed to believe she then becomes a famous artist and the gang rape is romantic somehow. And then she takes revenge on them by having sex with them later in life. It was impossible, I thought. The person who wanted it said, “I see it as a combination of The Way We Were and Fatal Attraction!”

Do you think of yourself as a funny writer?

Sometimes, yeah. “The Agonized Face” is definitely a funny story in my mind. So is “Secretary,” actually. Very dark comedy there, but there is an element of comedy.

Do you think of yourself as a funny person?

Sometimes. [Laughter.] If I’m with people I feel relaxed with.

In one of your earlier stories, “Comfort,” the narrator Daniel says, “I always knew there was something wrong with [his girlfriend] Jackie.” How do you allow a reader to see that something seems off about her, but to not be able to identify exactly what? Yet I feel so sorry for her, for both of them. How do you control what the reader thinks of your characters with such command?

Thank you for the compliment, but I’m not trying to control what readers think at all. I don’t think that kind of control is desirable or even possible. People think things about my stories that shock me, and it’s uncomfortable. That is how it is in life—you can’t control people’s reactions and that’s as it should be. But about the characters in “Comfort,” they are both a bit lost and just ill-suited for each other. Yes, there is something stunted about her emotionally, but he’s also not the person she could connect with.

In “Secretary,” Debbie’s boss kind of points out to her that she’s stunted, or emotionally blocked. What’s that process like, creating that block? Sometimes the reader wants the character to act in ways that we know they cannot.

If you workshopped that, people would probably say you need to know more about the male character in that story. He’s like a cipher. He just kind of exists to do things to her. We don’t know where he’s coming from other than he just gets off on doing things to her. For the purposes of that story, I don’t think it’s wrong. It would be interesting to see his point of view, but it would take away some of its power. There’s something about it being all one direction that’s intense, like a big wave. Besides, it’s about her. Part of her experience is she has no idea what’s going on with him. She’s on the receiving end of all of this stuff, which she has no grip on, yet which she finds herself responding to. That’s what makes it a powerful story. And I feel free to say that because it’s one of my favorite stories. And I almost didn’t put that story in the book, by the way.

Good thing you did. Reviewers use the word mentally unstable—

They do? About my characters or about me? [Laughter.]

No, no. About your characters! Do you feel your characters have as many psychological problems as readers seem to think they do? They get a lot of attention for being unstable, bizarre, or weird.

I think most of them are not that weird. I have some characters I’d perhaps describe as mentally ill. I mean, some of them are strange. Dorothy in Two Girls Fat and Thin is a strange person, but her life has been strange. She’s reacting to the circumstances of her life. People are shaped by events, and often what looks strange to an outsider would make a lot of sense if you could see what they were responding to. The family in “Secretary” is a little strange. The father is, anyway, but in a really human way that is both pathetically sad and absurd-funny. Dolores is mentally ill, but not totally, she’s not crazy. She’s in a lot of pain, which, again, is very human. And very absurd, the way she handles it, but also brave.

Just because someone’s different doesn’t mean disturbed.

It doesn’t shock me that people describe my characters that way, although mentally ill is a little strong. In the context of their lives, they’re not that strange. People are strange. The strangeness hits you when you see it written down, but people are weird. Readers sometimes react to something almost too strongly because secretly they know they’re weird. We fail to see the obvious craziness every day, especially if it’s socially sanctioned craziness. Shows like The Bachelor and Want To Marry A Millionaire—OMFG.

You create so much empathy for all of your characters. Can you think of a character you couldn’t create empathy for?

Yeah, I’m sure there are such characters.

If “Secretary” was written by a male, do you think it would be perceived as more entertaining than shocking?

No. I think men are judged more harshly for writing sex scenes.

Really?

Unless things have changed. Do you know a book by Nicholson Baker, The Fermata? It’s about a guy who can stop time. The guy, instead of pursuing world domination or stealing lots of money, he takes women’s clothes off and masturbates on them. He doesn’t rape them and he cleans everything up, and sometimes if he really likes her, if he knows her, he’ll write some porn and leave it where she can find it. Then he’ll come in while she’s reading it, and he’ll stop time again. [Laughter.] I thought it was really funny, but, my God, it got attacked. People just jumped all over him. They thought he was a pervert, a rapist, absolutely filthy. And if a woman had written something this, I think they would’ve been treated much better.

That makes me feel better as a female writer.

[Laughter.] Well, unless it’s changed again. That was back in the nineties. Women are allowed to go places that men won’t be allowed to go. For example, a Japanese writer named Natsuo Kirino, the last scene in her book Out is incredibly violent. I won’t tell you the whole thing, but there is a sex scene in the end, it’s really intense sadomasochism and it’s very romantic. It ends in one of them being killed, but they’re saying, “I love you, I love you.” If a man wrote that, he would be pilloried. He’d be ridden out of a town on a rail. Reviewers were shocked by it, but I didn’t see any condemnation. One British reviewer said, “I don’t dare comment on what I think of this absurd last scene, in deference to the gender of the writer.” Meaning if it was a man, he would’ve clobbered it. And he was making that clear.

I don’t know actually if that should make you feel better though. It is good to have freedom wherever you can, but I think women are allowed more in this case because the body is considered the realm of feminine authority. Also male sexuality is taken more seriously for obvious reasons; a man writing a bloody sadomasochism scene feels more dangerous because men murder women on the regular. Basically, it’s coding what’s allowable in terms of gender on the same traditional criteria. Though somebody like Kirino really pushes it. Most women still seem to fall back on charm and she doesn’t do that for an instant—and good for her.

We were speaking earlier about your profound essay in Harper’s Magazine “On Not Being A Victim.” You undercut Camille Paglia in this essay for stating that if any girl who goes alone into a frat house and proceeds to tank up is cruising for a gang bang, and if she doesn’t know that, then she’s an idiot. We’re on a college campus surrounded by fraternity houses—can you talk some more about your reaction to Camille’s stance?

Camille Paglia / photo credit: Misa Martin

Hey, let’s not call her by her first name! I think Paglia was saying that girls are more vulnerable and if they are not aware of that and if they don’t act accordingly, they’re stupid. It’s true. Girls are more vulnerable. However, in most cases, you don’t have to walk into a room assuming that if you’re drunk and there are mostly men in the room, you’re going to be raped. It’s just putting it too simply and much too harshly to then be calling people stupid. Its actually not realistic. I mean, sometimes, yes. I remember years ago, I had neighbors. They weren’t rapists, I don’t think. One early evening in summer, I was walking home past their open door and one of them said, “Hey, Mary, come in, we’re having a party.” I looked in. It was all dark, there were no women there, they were all smashed. And I got a bad feeling, so I smiled and said, “No, thanks.” I probably wouldn’t have been raped, but I easily could have been in a situation that was unpleasant. Okay, it could even have turned into rape. But it’s also true that I’ve been in that situation—all guys—and there was no danger. In most cases, you don’t have to walk in assuming that if you’re drunk they’re all going to wind up on top of you.

It’s interesting, I’ve known women who have fantasies about gang rape, and I know they don’t want to be raped—it’s like they want to have some control over the possibility through fantasy. My feeling is it’s not a masochistic fantasy, it’s more like, I can take all of you. I can satisfy all of you and still have more left over. I am powerful. There’s so much in me. With men, I’ve gotten the impression maybe it’s about fear. Because with all of them together, they can take her.

Collectively, yeah.

But I think it’s also about bonding with each other, like having a sexual experience together. Like getting drunk together. Sharing this woman.

When I teach, I see insecurity, pain, and confusion about understanding sex in a lot of young female students here, in their writing. Do you have any advice for these girls?

It seems to have gotten actually worse. I’m not sure if I can speak to girls now because it’s a really different world and it’s been influenced by the proliferation of heavily sexual images, and things that have always been true have gotten more so. For instance, there were always ideals of beauty. When I was young, it was much broader, what was considered attractive. But now it’s very rigid. There’s a certain ideal, and if you’re not it, you’re shit. And almost nobody is it, and even people who are it, don’t feel good enough.

It’s not just about appearance either—I meet women in their twenties who are in an absolute panic because they aren’t “successful,” and they have a very high standard of what that is supposed to be—the young women who have expressed this to me have all been more successful than I was at their age. Also, they criticize themselves mercilessly if they haven’t got a boyfriend, and it doesn’t seem to be about being lonely as much as feeling like there must be something wrong with them if they are single. I have been just plain revolted to hear celebrity women publicly worrying that they are the only one in their family to remain unmarried, or that they haven’t got a baby—who expects men to talk this kind of shit?

Women have always been prone to feeling like that, I think, and that isn’t about appearance. Men of course suffer from this stuff too. But it gets heightened when one’s appearance is so relentlessly focused on as an indicator of worth, and that is much, much more extreme now for girls and starting at a younger age. My nieces were obsessed with their looks at the age of seven; I didn’t even know about it when I was seven. I mentioned being a stripper. When I was doing that in the ’70s, only a handful of women who worked that way were really beautiful. They weren’t all tall, thin blondes with breasts of a certain size. There were people who were completely flat-chested, and people who were actually kind of fat. There were women of all shapes and sizes, and some of the most popular ones weren’t even pretty.

But the men were attracted to them.

Yeah. The men liked them anyway because they were open to how the women expressed their sexuality and personality; what they really liked was the feeling that the woman liked them. Whereas now, they all look the same, and they’re all on stage at once, so there’s not so much room for individuality. They’ve all got fake tits, or many of them do. I guess I should admit that my knowledge is limited because I’ve only been in maybe two strip clubs in the last ten years. But in both cases I was really struck by the uniformity, that they were all trying to be the same thing.

It’s a dumb thing to bring up, maybe, because most people aren’t strippers. But compared to what it was like when I was young, it’s just gotten much more rigid what’s expected of young women. Supposedly, they have more opportunities and they’re more equal. Yet they are made to feel worse about themselves. Women are in the army now—big difference, right? Yet there’s a popular TV show on, “Military Wives” or “Army Wives” or whatever—like being a wife is a drama! Can you imagine a show called “Military Husbands,” advertised by a perfectly coiffed young man wistfully staring?

Then there’s the phenomenon of porn being everywhere via the Internet. About a year ago I had a conversation after a story a student had turned in. She was saying that men are not interested in their girlfriends anymore because of porn, and how they expect their girlfriends to be like porn stars. I just couldn’t believe it. I said, “That’s absurd, porn is an act, men want a real response from women.” Well, the cover story in New York Magazine a few weeks ago says I’m wrong, that men are obsessed with and addicted to Internet porn and the way porn stars look and behave to the point that they have trouble responding to real women. The article didn’t say that men actually want their girlfriends to behave like porn stars–in fact, they don’t-but that they almost can’t respond to “real” anymore. Which is a nightmare. I mean, it is New York Magazine, so consider the source. Still, it’s creepy if its half-true.

They can’t get turned on by the live woman in front of them? That’s scary.

And it’s worse for the men, really. It’s like they’re being manipulated to the point where they’ve lost themselves. For the women, though, that is really hideous. If you can’t even be yourself in the most intimate physical way with your boyfriend or husband, that is insecurity on a scale that is going to subvert everything about you.

Do you feel any regret or embarrassment when you look back? With life? With writing?

In my life, yes. But, that’s life. In writing, no. Well, except I do wish I’d written more.

All writers deal with loneliness at some point in their lives. How did you overcome those younger times when you felt bruised inside?

I gradually learned how to be more comfortable in the world. It was harder than I can describe. But eventually I learned to be a better friend to myself.

What types of female characters would you like to see more of in the future?

Never thought about it. I’m not sure I could define it. I do hope that women become better, but I don’t know if I could say particular qualities they need to have in order to do that. Except that they need to forget about being charming or pretty on the page. Charm and prettiness are irrelevant in art and in heavy doses they are deadly.

Do you think there’s a male equivalent to Mary Gaitskill writing right now?

That’s an interesting thought. If there was, I might not have read him, but I don’t know how you would make that comparison.

One of our professors here, Nicholas Delbanco, gave a reading and talk last week from his new book, Lastingness, about artists producing work in the face of aging. What do you think if you think of mortality?

Well, I do think about lastingness. I think I have a good shot to last for maybe fifty years or something like that. Lasting longer than that, I’m not sure. I would like to. Especially because I don’t have children, I like the idea of being part of a group of writers that leaves something behind. I know how meaningful it was to me when I was young to read, oh gosh, not even writers I consider that great now, but Colette, say—she was one of the first literary writers I loved and really responded to. D.H. Lawrence was another one. Flannery O’Connor, too, whom I consider great. It was the most amazing thing to be that young and living in such a different world and yet to be reading people describing a life that was so different from mine, but which I could still respond to.

A way to propel yourself into the future.

And to connect with the past and to feel a continuum. If I could do that for people—and I do mean people, not just women—that would be a justification for my existence. I think there’s real beauty and hope in that. My fear is that it just won’t matter anymore, or that people won’t read, or that the world will actually be destroyed, or that I just won’t last that long. But even fifty years is pretty good.

How does it feel to be so successful?

I don’t consider I am that successful. I’m grateful for what I have. I have a degree of success and I’m happy about it, but I think I could do better.

And what’s next?

I’m working on a couple of novels now. They are both hard.

One last simple question: Do you feel you’ve affected women?

Yes. [Smiling.]

Further Links and Resources:

• Read some of Gaitskill’s work online:
  • “The Other Place” in The New Yorker
  • “Something Better Than This” in Fictionaut
  • “College Town” in Vice
• Read Gaitskill’s essay “On Not Being A Victim” in Harper’s Magazine (unfortunately, for Harper’s subscribers only)
• Find Gaitskill’s collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To, and Don’t Cry, and her novels, Two Girls, Fat and Thin and Veronica, at an indie bookstore near you

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” Easy for Mary Heaton Vorse to say, perhaps, but what if you need a little more help getting those two seats together?

Writers, being creative people, come up with lots of creative ways to get motivated. Two friends of mine from grad school would get together for enforced writing time; if one of them didn’t write, she would be forced to donate money to a cause she loathed, like the NRA. I don’t know if either of them ever actually had to donate—a bargain like that would certainly keep my pen on the paper.

And a fellow Grub Street instructor, Michael Marano, has come up with this unusual idea. In an email, he outlined a “writer’s tontine” :

It’s hard for me to be as productive as I’d like to be with my fiction without real external pressures of time and money. [...] How do you put real money at stake to meet a deadline for a novel (or other project) you’re writing on spec? Simple. Put up your own money and create a deadline.

I’m thinking of starting a kitty, or maybe a riff on a Tontine. A bunch of writers working on projects each put in, say $200. The money is put into a bank account. Then we create a deadline for a set amount of work on each of our projects. For example, I need to finish the second draft of a novel I’m writing. Maybe someone else wants to finish five new stories and submit them. And maybe a third person wants to write a first draft of his or her novel. The money sits in the account, collecting interest. Whoever does not produce the agreed upon amount of work by the predetermined deadline loses his or her $200, which is then divided among or between the writers who do make the deadline. If we all make the deadline, we divide up the interest accrued (pennies, I’m sure–but we’d get our initial $200 back).

Or maybe the key to getting more writing done is just finding a muse more like this (NSFW).