On Finishing

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

How does a writer know when she's finished--actually taken a manuscript as far as it can be taken? Whenever I think about this, one of my favorite quotes about writing, from E.L. Doctorow, comes to mind. Doctorow once famously said that writing a book is like driving in the fog, at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can get all the way home that way. To take Doctorow's metaphor a bit further, then how do you know when you're finished? Maybe when you crash into the garage door?

I have finished DEVOTION. Which is to say that I hit the "send" button a few weeks ago, and off it went to my agent and my editor. And then I held my breath. I didn't even have time to turn blue in the face--and believe me, I know how lucky I am--because I heard from both of them within forty-eight hours. They both loved my book, and so we are off to the races. I went from finishing a draft of a manuscript, which is such a tender, frail thing, to pre-publication mode, which is an intensity of a completely different sort.

But still, as I turn my attention to catalog copy and blurbs and author photos and all the rest, I am fiddling. Turning a magnifying lens on my sentences. The other day I stared at two words for hours. I think someone else once famously said that a writer knows she's finished when she takes out the final comma, then puts it back in.

DEVOTION will be published--along with a new edition of SLOW MOTION--in March.

On The Questions People Ask

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

I hadn't seen the acupuncturist in five years. The last time I had visited her office had been for fertility treatments. This time, I had injured my back doing yoga, and was hoping that perhaps a session or two with her would help. She reviewed my chart as she brought me into the treatment room. The sound of a waterfall played through speakers in the background.

"Still writing?" she asked.
"Yes...still writing," I replied faintly.

Seven books into my writing life, this question still is one of a small handful of questions that makes me insane. I resisted the urge to ask the acupuncturist if she was still acupuncture-ing. She was about to poke me with a series of needles, after all. But why is it that people ask artists if they're still practicing their art, as if maybe the whole thing had just been a lark and a hobby--traded in for, say, needle-pointing? Can you imagine asking an attorney if she's still practicing law? A doctor if he's still performing surgery?

At the end of my session with the acupuncturist, she talked to me about vitamins. She suggested that I take calcium, magnesium, and a multi-vitamin. She was just trying to decide which one.

"Still menstruating?" she asked.

I limped home--my back in worse shape than before. Shook off the indignity of it all. And sat down at my desk, back to my little hobby.

On Material

Monday, May 4, 2009

Where do they come from--these stories we write? What takes hold of us, and what doesn't--and why? I used to be willfully ignorant about my themes until I had written enough books to be informed of what my themes are by critics. Most reviews of my last couple of novels have begun with a variation on: Dani Shapiro writes about family. Or mothers and daughters. Or fractured family relationships. Or family secrets. I've read it enough times to know it must be true--but when I sit down to write, I am not thinking at all about theme, or material, or subject matter. I'm being led into the work by my obsessions, by some small incident I can't let go of, something I've seen, or overheard, or felt. In fact, too much awareness of what I purportedly write about is damaging to the writing itself.

Here are some thoughts to avoid when sitting down to write:

1. I need to write a big book (story, whatever)
2. This idea is stupid (before even trying it out on the page)
3. What will so-and-so think?
4. I wonder if it will be published
5. I usually write about X, therefore
6. I should write about X again because it's been so successful, or
7. I should write about Y, because I've already written so much about X
8. Why even bother?

I realized something recently, when looking at a file I keep on my computer of all the essays and stories I've written in the past few years. I looked down the list and became aware that every single time I began, it was with the thought: Here goes nothing.

Here goes nothing. It's not a bad way to think, actually, about beginning a new piece of work. For writers, we have nothing until we have something. And the willingness to play, to try out ideas on the page, to take risks, to quiet the inner censor and just give our material a chance to live and breathe is what it's all about.

On First Readers

Friday, May 1, 2009

I'm in the final pages of my new book--I can feel it. As I'm finishing this draft, I'm struck by a familiar feeling--one I had forgotten. I keep thinking that I'm fooling myself. That I'm faking myself out. That I can't possibly really be finishing. And now I'm remembering that this is how I always feel after a couple of years of suspending my disbelief that the pile of pages sitting to the left of my laptop will ever amount to anything. That one flimsy, delicate page at a time will actually add up to a coherent narrative. I'm pretty sure that at some point next week, or possibly the week after, I will write the last sentences, the final words--or at least the final words for the moment. I will write the dedication page, which is something I never do until I finish. And the epigraph. (I'll probably save the acknowledgments for later.) And then I'll send it off to my first readers.

People often ask me how to choose their first readers. It's a tricky thing to do--to decide in whose hands to place your brand new baby. How do you decide who to trust? Who will understand the responsibility? Who will take it seriously as the sacred job it really is? I have found, over the years, that different books require different readers. For this one, I intend to ask a couple of writer friends who I can trust to be clear, gentle and straight with me--and who have no agendas other than helping me to make this the best book it can be. In this particular case, I will also ask a few friends who are experts in certain areas I'm covering--so that I can make sure I'm getting facts right. And I will give it to my editor of course.

Maybe a better way to think of it is: who DON'T you want to be a first reader. I have a simpler answer: anyone who won't tell you the truth, for any reason. I assume, when a writer friend or a student gives me a manuscript--implicit in this is the knowledge that I will spend many hours reading it--it's because they want my help. Not just a pat on the back. Not just a pronouncement of their brilliance. Once I lost a friendship over this. I read a friend's 700 page novel and went to dinner ready to talk it through (it had problems). The writer, who is brilliant and someone I respect a lot, made it clear before we even looked at the menu that he had really just been looking for praise. Praise! I could have done that without reading 700 pages. So when I give my manuscript to my first readers, it is with an understanding that we're colleagues and take each other--and each other's work--seriously. Gentleness, yes. Compassion, clarity. But also--most importantly--the truth about our response to what's on the page. Otherwise, really, what's the point?