9 Outtakes from James Baldwin's Paris Review interview - Rolf Potts
I listened to the Coup and read everything James Baldwin had written that summer. I learned you haven’t read anything if you’ve only read something once or twice. Reading things more than twice was the reader version of revision. I read The Fire Next Time over and over again. I wondered how it would read differently had the entire book, and not jus
... See moreKiese Laymon • Heavy: An American Memoir
Most writers write simply out of some strong interior need, and that, I think, is the answer. A great writer, writing out of this need, will give substance to, and perhaps even explain, all the problems of the world without even knowing it, until a scholar comes along one hundred years after he’s dead and digs up some symbols. The purpose of a youn
... See moreSALMAN RUSHDIE • The Paris Review Interviews, IV
if you lament that you lack the material you need to write, you are giving up way too easily. If you just shift your focus a little bit and slightly alter your way of thinking, you will discover a wealth of material lying about just waiting to be picked up and used. You only have to look. In the field of human endeavor, things that seem mundane at
... See moreHaruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation: The master storyteller on writing and creativity
I’ve worked with so many wildly talented young writers over the years that I feel qualified to say that there are two things that separate writers who go on to publish from those who don’t. First, a willingness to revise. Second, the extent to which the writer has learned to make causality.
George Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
Murakami argues that the three most important traits in any writer are talent, focus and endurance. Maybe that’s the right order in inspiration-laden fields like novel writing or composing symphonies, but in most of our vocations, endurance, or stamina, matters most.