Writers on how they write: Nicholson Baker

The Wall Street Journal had a great article last Friday: “How to Write a Great Novel”, reflections by 11 novelists on how they approach writing. Since the article is subscription only, I’ll feature one writer per day here, highlighting their process with a key excerpt from the article.

Today’s writer is Nicholson Baker, whose novels include “The Mezzanine,” “Checkpoint,” and “The Anthologist.”

He wrote his first novel, “The Mezzanine,” by dictating to a voice recorder during his commute to work. For his recent novel “The Anthologist,” a first-person narrative by a frustrated poet who’s struggling to write the introduction to a new anthology, he grew out a beard to resemble his character, put on a floppy brown hat, set up a video camera on a tripod and videotaped himself giving poetry lectures. He transcribed about 40 hours worth of tape, and ended up with some 1,000 pages of notes and transcription. Creating the voice of a rambling professor “was something I had to work on a lot in order to get the feeling of being sloppy,” said Mr. Baker.

Do any of you use a tape recorder for your writing? I did for K-9 when I was traveling up and down California to do my stand-up comedy gigs, working out possible beats and character business, transcribing the entire mess when I had a break, and then hashing out the plot based on that. But never since that since script.

How about you?

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