“How Writers Create Their Fiction”: Richard Powers

I uncovered this month-long NPR series “How Writers Create Their Fiction”, originally run in November 2006. I found many of the ideas presented by the various writers to be informative and inspirational, so we’ll be featuring one writer from the series per day during February.

Today’s writer is Richard Powers:

How He Writes: “I like to start early, as fresh from sleep as possible. If the going is slow at first, I will tinker with yesterday’s sentences until I feel myself back in the flow. I’ll break for lunch and then hit my peak hours in the mid-afternoon. Invention and refinement seem to play off each other, all day long. In the early evening, when I start to fade, I’ll shift over to reading, which takes me into the night and primes the pump for the next day.”

Writer’s Block Remedies: “In 25 years of writing novels, I’ve never had anything that felt like writer’s block. I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.”

Come back tomorrow at 9AM PST for more writing wisdom.

UPDATE: In comments, Zach asked if anyone “verbalized” their story before writing, perhaps using a handheld recorder. That brought to mind screenwriter Larry Cohen:

“When [Larry] Cohen is writing a screenplay, there are certain things he will not do. He will not rely on an outline. Over the years, he has found that organization and planning make his stories fall flat… He will not use a computer.

‘Oh, no,’ Cohen says on being asked if he owns a laptop. “When I write, I’m watching the movie in my head, imagining it. I want to be in it. I don’t like to see the words that I’m writing.’

Until the moment he pushes ‘record’ and starts to talk, he doesn’t know much about the story he’s telling. Then, suddenly, he does.

‘The people around him cease to exist during that moment, ‘ says his first wife, Janelle Webb Towey, who collaborated on many of the films Cohen wrote, directed, and produced under his own banner, Larco Productions. ‘He just goes bye-bye. His eyes glaze over, and he’s in a world of his own that he’s creating. He walks around with that litte tape-recorder thing, talking. He’s all the characters. He speaks in their voices. His whole body gets into the act.’

‘The best stuff, I don’t remember writing,’ Cohen maintains. ‘The subconscious just takes over.’ His subconscious generally fills up both sides of a ninety-minute cassette, which his conscious self then pays a typist to turn into about twenty-five pages. With ‘ a fix-up here, a fix-up there — but surprisingly very little,’ he says, five good writing days can yield a finished screenplay. Each year, he offers as many as six of these completed (or ‘spec’) scripts for sale to the highest bidder.”

 — “The Survivor: Hollywood’s King of Schlock,” The New Yorker, February 2, 2004 about screenwriter-director Larry Cohen

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