A Quote by E. L. Doctorow
I'm not the sort of writer who can walk into a party and take a look around, see who's sleeping with whom and go home and write a novel about society. It's not the way I work.
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I've had this look for about a year. I usually grow this beard out around Christmas. I like to go to malls dressed as Jesus, and I like to then walk around the mall and go, 'No! No! This wasn't what it was supposed to be about, people!' Then if there's a Santa at the mall, I walk up to him and say, 'Listen, fat man, you're just a clown at my birthday party.'
Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.
Often, you have to fail as a writer before you write that bestselling novel or ground-breaking memoir. If you're failing as a writer - which it definitely feels like when you're struggling to write regularly or can't seem to earn a living as a freelance writer - maybe you need to take a long-term perspective.
The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it.
Growing up in England, you're sort of spoiled, in a way. You sort of take it for granted that within a half-hour's drive, you could be walking around a stately home from the 1700s. It's not very hard to do - in California, you've got to take a flight!
I don't have a whole bunch of literary connections. I don't write reviews or attend writer's conferences. I'm kind of shy and don't want to go to a party. I just want to stay home and read my murder mysteries and try to write and cook dinner.
I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.
The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.
I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.
You can't go home and look at your plaques at the end of the day, because every politician has like a million plaques on their wall. OK? You don't go home and look at - you don't get anything for that. And you can't go home and say, boy, I really served the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. You want to go home and, you know, Fourth of July, you know, any of these special holidays that recognize our country, you want to feel like you've built a stronger nation, which means you helped build the people and put them in a stronger place where everyone's lifted.
I love to walk around New York. Honestly, that's like the best thing, to walk over to Park Slope and go visit my friend Betty and take her dog out in the park or go walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I really dig being outside and getting to see everybody in the street.
I had never thought about writing a novel. But I had two young kids, and I realized that if I could write a novel, I could work at home.
When I wrote my first book, 'The Tennis Party', my overriding concern was that I didn't write the autobiographical first novel. I was so, so determined not to write about a 24-year-old journalist. It was going to have male characters, and middle-aged people, so I could say, 'Look, I'm not just writing about my life, I'm a real author.'
See, I think if it just became who's sleeping with whom, then there's no reason to prefer one party over the other, 'cause the truth is we're all sinners.
I don't always feel sexy even though I have to look it, and I've just learned to go into on-and-off mode. I'm a mom at home, and then I go into work, and it's nice to have that contrast. I see a different person in the mirror when I'm at work with hair and makeup than when I'm home.
When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, 'I'm going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late, I can still live my dreams.'
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