A Quote by Lucy Corin
I didn't learn how to read and write until pretty late, and it was this very mysterious, incredible thing, like driving, that I didn't get to do. And then I started writing things down on little scraps of paper and I would hide them. I would write the year on them and then I would stuff them in a drawer somewhere. But I didn't start to really read until about eight. I'm dyslexic, so it took a long time.
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I write lyrics really fast. When it's time to write, I usually put them off until the very end and then when it's time to write I can just sit down: I sing the melody, whatever the melody is, because that's the first thing that's already been there for a long time; I start singing it and I start creating consonants and vowels; then they turn into words; then all of the sudden one sentence will happen; then that sentence will dictate how the rest of the sentences happen.
I've been writing for a long time, since the late '60s. But it hasn't been in the same form. I used to write scripts for television. I wrote for my comedy act. Then I wrote screenplays, and then I started writing New Yorker essays, and then I started writing plays. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the New Yorker essays, but they were comic. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the '90s. In my head, there was a link between everything. One thing led to another.
I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite... I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.
I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag. And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.
I'm a morning person because I learned to write my novels while still practicing law. I would get to the office at 6:30 a.m. and write until other people arrived, around 9. Now I still do that. I start at 6:30 or 7, and I'll write until 11, then take an hour off, then work until about 2 p.m. By then my brain has had enough.
It's funny - for a long time, I didn't know I was writing a book. I was writing stories. For me, each story took so long and took so much out of me, that when I finished it, I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I've poured everything from myself into this, and then I'd get depressed for a week. And then once I was ready to write a new story, I would want to write about something that was completely different, so I would search for a totally different character with a different set of circumstances.
Advice? Focus on the craft. Study the greats. Try and understand how and why they made the writing choices they did. Then, start by copying them...just as an exercise. See if you can do similar things. Learn how to write a song like so and so. Then, when you've done that, write a song like yourself. Learn to color within the lines before going outside them.
There are probably a couple of things I'd never write about until everyone I know is dead. And then there's other stuff which nobody would want to read a book about anyway.
I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I?
I write for myself, and perhaps for half a dozen friends. And that should be enough. And that might improve the quality of my writing. But if I were writing for thousands of people, then I would write what might please them. And as I know nothing about them, and maybe I'd have a rather low opinion of them, I don't think that would do any good to my work.
Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.
When I'm late it matters, but when everybody else is late it doesn't matter... If that's the rule then just write it down and then I know, you know... I'll read it and I'll write it down on my balls. Right here. Right here on the back of my balls is where I'll write it. On the very back. I'll just lift them and write it nicely.
When you learn to read and write, it opens up opportunities for you to learn so many other things. When you learn to read, you can then read to learn. And it's the same thing with coding. If you learn to code, you can code to learn. Now some of the things you can learn are sort of obvious. You learn more about how computers work.
I had a lot of great lakes of ignorance that I was up against, I would write what I knew in almost like islands that were rising up out of the oceans. Then I would take time off and read, sometimes for months, then I would write more of what I knew, and saw what I could see, as much as the story as I could see. And then at a certain point I had to write out what I thought was the plot because it was so hard to keep it all together in my head. And then I started to write in a more linear way.
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