A Quote by Joseph O'Neill
Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.
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There are two different ways of writing a novel. The first I call the traditional father way, when the novelist slightly situates himself or herself above the text and knows what each and every character is going to do. It's a bit like engineering. I've never felt close to that tradition. I like the second way, which relies a bit more on intuition.
English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.
Don't tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
Writing is a little athletic for me. I get worked up a little bit when I do it. So I guess I'm a little bit like that composer conducting. There are a lot of things that go into what I do, but I think athletics really sort of shaped my ethic.
Way, way, way back I played a little bit, but I am definitely not a golfer. You know, it just takes too much time anyway during the course of the day.
Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.
As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.
I'm writing a novel about a scallywag who is a bit like me.
Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way they did it before the digital age. The photograph, as it was printed in the darkroom, became visible bit by bit. As you read your way through a novel, the same chemical process takes place.
Writing the novel felt so private to me! I think publishing a novel is quite public and exposing, and what's a little frightening to me right now is the fact that it feels so entirely opposed to the privacy that is writing.
As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read a great novel - something that I could never have written myself - I'm still looking at it a little bit like a technician.
When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel.
Art is a deception that creates real emotions - a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic.
I've been thinking a lot about why it was so important to me to do The Idiot as a novel, and not a memoir. One reason is the great love of novels that I keep droning on about. I've always loved reading novels. I've wanted to write novels since I was little. I started my first novel when I was seven.I don't have the same connection to memoir or nonfiction or essays. Writing nonfiction makes me feel a little bit as if I'm producing a product I don't consume - it's a really alienating feeling.
At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.
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