George - The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction you've been awarded is such a well-deserved honor. Congratulations! You briefly noted this honor, and it seemed, barely stopped to take a breath before telling us about your drive south and a visit to Steinbeck’s house. It is such a privilege to be part of Story Club and all you share with us here. Thank you so much for all that you do!
You should be moved, George. I’m moved that someone who has moved me (through your writing as well as your teaching) as much as you have has also moved the bestowers of such a rarified literary honor to bestow that honor on you. Of all the writers I admire, I can’t think of any that I’d say I’m proud of except you. I’m proud of you, George.
The man slept as the woman read A Swim in the Pond in the Rain on her iPad, making exclamatory sounds that woke him up. She didn’t typically make noises when she read. But this was George Saunders, and she felt different when she read his books, almost as if she was having an affair right there in bed, next to the man she’d been married to for
forty years. Over several nights, she read as he slept. Sometimes he got up to use the bathroom. When he did, she’d return the iPad to the her nightstand, setting aside her guilty pleasure.
She thought about the clothes hanging on the line in Tolstoy’s “Master and Man.” It was a stunning insight Saunders had shared: the clothes were shouting a warning, that each of the three - was it three? - times the doomed travelers passed by, the storm’s fury increased and the clothes on the line signaled that things were not going to end happily. She closed her eyes around that image. It felt vivid. It seemed to be gesturing to her as well. Life is short, it said. Take it back before the storm takes you. Go out and do something with that MFA. Eventually, she fell asleep.
Two years passed. He got his diagnosis. The disease progressed, slowly and then rapidly. When he went to hospice, she stayed with him, often overnight. She read as he slept. Among the books she read was Lincoln in the Bardo. She’d read it many times, but it held a special meaning now. A different view of death? It was comforting, and hilarious. It made the difficult time more bearable.
One night he woke up. She reached over to push the button that summoned the nurse. But he didn’t want the nurse. He wanted to know if she was reading George Saunders.
She held up her copy of his latest book, Liberation Day.
“Yes,” she said. “I confess. I’ve been unfaithful to you.”
“I knew it,” he replied. “Why else would you be reading so late into the night? Then hiding your iPad. As if you could keep your secret.”
He smiled. The nurse came with his pain meds.
After he left, he said, “That story. ‘Sticks.’
It’s my favorite. It’s on my IPad.”
She was surprised. He did not read much literary fiction. He enjoyed science fiction, history, and books about the cosmos.
“One of mine, too,” she said.
He smiled again. “It’s my favorite. Please read it to me.”
She read. A story so Saunders: sad, poignant, funny. He smiled. She thought she saw a tear. He died two weeks later.
My reader, the one I see as I write, is the one who knows how to read me. And knows of my long love affair with George Saunders. And tells me, again, to write, or he will come after me in his Bardo form, a shirt flapping on a clothesline, saying Life is short. Use your MFA.
George, thank you. I was ready to edit out a couple of the “He smiled,” iterations as embarrassing and amateurish but left them in because I want more than anything to remember that smile. He is in a good place: a black plastic box on my - uh, her - dining room table. Sometimes she picks him up and walks around the house, pointing out the nice things he left for her in this world.❤️
I wrote this for you. You and I have much in common.
The woman and her husband were elderly, and their five dogs were also very old. So sweet Maggie’s death was not a shock, just a sadness. In their forty years together, the couple had buried a lot of dogs on their small property, and they were no longer sure of where all the graves were. It was December, and the ground was cold and hard. So when her husband went into the garage and came out slow and weary carrying the shovel, she said, “Let’s just take her to the vet and have her cremated.” And so they did.
Sweet Maggie came back in a sad little box. So small, so sad. She didn’t know what to do with it. She wanted Maggie to be in a good place. So she put her on the top shelf of the closet, next to my mother and my sister, Loretta - uh, her mother, her sister. “There,’ she said. “That’s a good place for you.”
And then she kissed her husband goodnight and went to bed with George.
This is beautiful. What a lovely gift. I’ve lost many beloved pets - cats, mostly - over my lifetime. I now live with a twenty-one-year-old Siberian named Mini who has been to the edge more than her allotted nine times. In March, I had to bring her to the vet four times, at a total cost of over a thousand dollars. My husband passed in April. Mini stays close to me, especially at night, when she sniffs the side of the bed that he slept on, and then pushes her tiny body up against my large, soft one and stays there until I pull out Lincoln in the Bardo, put my knees up, making a kind of tent where she feels safe as I spend the night with George.
Oh, yes, cats, too. We have three lovely ones right now. I hope Mini has lots more time with you. Your husband's passing is so recent that I know your pain is sharp and raw. I'm thinking of you.
Cats are deeply intuitive. We comfort each other. It’s hard to believe she’s so old. She’s been close to death’s door many times and always returns. Knowing her time will come - most likely soon - is hard. Thinking of all the sweetness she’s brought to the world makes it somewhat easier.
Oh, Mary! How beautiful! I'm getting ready to read Lincoln in the Bardo again--I've read it twice (back-to-back, immediately after finishing it, I flipped it over and began again!) Because of my reading habits and my husband's apnea, we sleep in separate rooms. Often as I trundle off to my room, I say, "Goodnight. Going to bed with George." And he smiles and says "Have fun." He too has read several stories now and will be reading more. Thank you for this gift on this beautiful and fragile morning.
Oh, Nancy. This is so wonderful. I’m glad I could share my story and thank you for sharing yours. How lovely to hear that I’m not alone - and maybe not at all perverse. We can balance our relationships with a great writer and great husbands. Give your guy a hug from me.❤️
So lovely Mary, thank you for the richness you add to this group and this world. Reminds me of when my dad was in his final days at home with pancreatic cancer, I can picture my stepmom doing the same.
Hi Mary- I'm new to commenting as of last week's intro... and so I don't know you beyond this post here, but you've brought tears to my eyes. I know about reading in the hospital, about reading as grief looms over me, and even about hiding my nighttime reading (or trying to!) Just wanted to say thank you for this. I'm glad you are here using your MFA, and I hope you gift it to the outside world too.
Maritza - I haven’t commented much, but the self-introductions George invited us to make put me in touch with some brave souls who are also experiencing grief. It’s good to know that we’re not alone, and that while the pain is there, the memories can be a way of moving us forward. And I really do believe that if I don’t share my writing, my husband will come after me. He was a gentle soul in this world, but who knows what will happen in the Bardo.
Marcy, you are so very kind. I have been through many things in my life that have kept me from writing. It’s not easy to share my work. But you give me hope that I can connect, on Story Club and elsewhere. Much love.❤️
I have no idea of your age … not that it matters except in ensuring that you have experienced birth life death and all the various ways these passages choose to deliver their beautiful and ugly selves…
As for writing and connecting???
I don’t have to read your “work” …
The writings on this site are as much you as your fiction or non fiction..,
Maybe even more so …
I have read and listened to some small amounts of George’s work … and yet based on all he writes to us …
I think I am a “George” groupie… and a huge fan of anything and everything he writes here…
And you for me are def in that category as far as your writings and comments …
I learn much from you
I learn much from the originator of story club..,
How I got here I can’t remember…
But you are def a connecting line of influence and information and teaching…
Marcy, I am deeply honored that you read and care about my posts. I came to this place through a Story Club invitation that arrived in my inbox. Followed it here, and discovered a real and vibrant community. Since my husband passed, I’ve found it uniquely comforting to show up on Thursdays and Sundays and post if the spirit moves me. I’ve been in online forums before, but none approached this as level of respect, trust, and intimacy. It allows me to reach into turbulent emotions to find the words I didn’t know were there. It’s a blessing and a gift and something hard to explain. It’s different from writing in solitude. Being among others who share the value of kindness as the source of all good endeavors brings a new dimension to writing, as it does to life.
My day job is being an actor, and reviews are a fact, and there are as many ways of handling it as there are artists who have breathed. Understanding that reviewing is itself an art, is the most helpful. A parallel art, a symbiotic art. When an actor performs, they have painstakingly toiled to free the word from the page, to have it float in the vortex that bubbles between us, transformed. And it always seems so ironic to me, that the first thing that happens, opening night, is those words are ripped from the air, and stapled right back down by a reviewer, of all people. But we NEED the reviewer. The reviewer is the member of our society who LOVES our art form as much as we do, these people devote their lives to pursuing its divinity, just like us. So, of course, they have an agenda, the same as we do—they have opinions about where and how the form should develop, ways and means that they adore and abhor. And sometimes, the reviewer who comes to your show, maybe they’re your favorite staff member on the paper, well, they’ve got their panties in a twist because they didn’t get assigned to cover the West End in London, no, they had to stay home and cover for the other reviewer, and so they saw seven shows in a row, and they have a deadline. So they were crabby. And they hated it. They wanted it to be something else. Sometimes I adopt this strategy: I have a trusted loved one read the review. Then I ask them questions that reveal the review in a manner I am ready to receive: eg generally positive or generally negative? Did they like the lights? (Cuz I happen to KNOW the lights are fantastic) Did they comment on this moment? What did they think of the lead? Gradually comparing what I know to be true (to myself) and stacking it against where they are coming from, so I can see the thing from more of a distance, and it feels like part of something larger, less of an individual attack, and more of a questioning, a probing. And then you are allowed to construct a response, either just in yourself, or actually draft it. So that your intentions become clearer to yourself, and you can get back out there, which you must do, that very evening, and give it your all, knowing that most of the audience will have these other words plastered in their minds as they watch you, you have to know that much more about what you are really trying for, and give the audience that thing, that you made, that you believe in. Ultimately, I think you have to believe that it is ALL one big process, it is all liquid, and you are moving towards something, all the time, it’s like light from the stars—it’s billions of years old by the time we see it, they could be ANYWHERE by now. You’re part of it. Whether you like it or not. So figure out the best way for you to like it. To love it. We are the lucky ones.
Thank you, Claudia; I think it helps to know that your little fire is part of a moving constellation. That your electron spinning in the dark is creating the possibility of new bonds, new molecules, forming and reforming, that simply the act of creating is a conversation, about what can become possible one day. A long time ago, my son and I were walking home from 2nd grade, and I asked him how it was going. He said, well in reading today, I made a connection, and then I made a connection to that connection, and then I made a connection that had nothing to do with school….and he trailed off. And I said, well, I think that’s probably the best thing you could hope for, did you like that connection? And he smiled so huge and said YES. And when he got home he drew for hours. I’ll never forget that day.
What did he draw I wonder. How marvelous that your son turns to art for expression. My daughter is an illustrator & even as a little girl turned to paper/pens. She had/has a language processing disorder but none on paper or canvas or wood. There she flies. I wish the same for your son. To be able to immediately express oneself in art or words or sound is a gift of self soothing that nothing else gives🌷
Gorgeous moment with your son! When I started imagining my secondary worlds and writing down the first drafts of those ideas I thought to myself: this is like playing, I’d forgotten the joy of simply getting absorbed in play. Of drawing for hours like your son did that day. I hope that he still plays.
The late Jerry Garcia said of the Grateful Dead: "Not everyone likes us, but those who like us REALLY like us."
Lawrence Olivier was asked why he acted. His response: "Look at me, look at me, look at me."
Back in my personal Pleistocene (or it may have been the Cambrian) I read an interview that the acclaimed jazz critic and producer Leonard Feather did with legendary saxophonist Paul Desmond. During the conversation, Feather asked Desmond his take on audience reaction. Desmond replied (and I paraphrase for the sake of brevity) that after a particularly dismal performance it was not unheard of to be complimented on his virtuosity, just as after a particularly stellar performance it was not unheard of to be offered condolences.
The huddled masses of the great unwashed make a fickle mistress. Best to navigate that landscape with practiced indifference and jaundiced eye.
What a great example. What if what we consider a stellar performance deviates from what the audience considers a stellar performance? I would want to bring the audience where I stand and not walk with my saxophone to ‘where they want me to be’. Now how do I do that without losing the fickle mistress?
The more links we get in a post the more I love it. Can't wait to read the Guardian piece. Free gift with purchase!
What a thoughtful question. I'm friends with a man who became a local art critic for two local weekly magazines, and later, a monthly magazine, he did this work for several years. I knew his opinions, I'd known him for a long time, he was my college roommate. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes I didn't, and slowly stopped reading at all. Now I rarely pay attention to critics. I see that critics (and even online reviews) are how books, art, films, albums, etc. get pushed to the front so we can find these things. I know how crucial it is, but I do have a feeling that there are books out there, essays, plays, poems, that I'd love to experience but didn't get the attention needed to propel forward, or even get published.
There are so many factors at play when something gets noticed and pushed forward. It’s about being at the right place, time and having the right connections. It’s about actively seeking and lubricating the network that will push you forward. Not everyone can do this, not everyone has access to it, not every piece of good writing will be pushed forward.
Thank you, Claudia! As a reader, I'm glad to see that different people are getting published now by artists from various walks of life. I regret the limited material we had when I was in high school in the 1980s.. We didn't even get Baldwin at my high school! I think that's changing, too. People are starting to wonder about all of it, challenge it.
It's a good thing that writing is getting democratised. I like to see the curated works of writers in schools, public libraries, book stores, but I also love discovering writers here on Substack tackling topics and themes that are not considered 'profitable' by the publishing houses (yet). Each voice has a unique take on the world and I love the diversity. I also see it as an opportunity for people to engage more with writing and develop their capacity to think and formulate their worldviews. Now that we're moving on from writing for the google algorithm I'm quite optimistic about the future of writing.
I agree. It's refreshing! I just read bell hooks for the first time last year, wish I'd known about her sooner. Lately I'm drawn to female writers, not on purpose, it just seems to happen that way. Favs right now are Claire Dederer, Jenny Offill, (reading Weather now), and of course my fav Clare Keegan.
I can't help but share your enthusiasm--and write often about overlooked women writers, in particular, and how history has obscured their work... it's so vital that their voices are there and are known more widely.
I am now in a sustained period of reform, in which I mostly steer clear of white male writers. The greatest reward (so far) was reading Zora Neale Hurston's operatic "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and giving myself license to read Jane Austen and Virginia Wolf's Mrs. Dalloway. I listen to the latter on audiobook and replay chapters over and over again to pick up the detail I missed on the first, second, third... audit.
I find that whether I consider my work good or not can often depend on my mood. One day it seems brilliant and the next day foolish. I have to put it away for a while, long enough to disassociate myself from it so I can read it as if it were new to me. I never consider an audience because if I write to an audience that is other than me, I distort what I want to say to please them or what I think will please them and then I get tangled up in untruths and misunderstandings, the sticky web between me and them. The whole point of writing it seems to me is to tell a story about yourself, whatever form it takes, so the story has to be true for you and as well told as you can manage if it has any prayer of being read or understood by someone else. First it has to be a true thing and only you the writer knows whether that's so.
“'George Saunders has an uncanny ability to reveal the complexities of life and death in his writing; in doing so, he points to the truth of our shared human condition,' said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden." George, congratulations! Hayden's assessment is spot on.
How do I know when what I'm writing is good? As you say, George, I know because it delights me to read it. But I frequently teeter toward self-doubt, especially in the draft of others' critical words. On the other hand, my love of writing still carries more weight than my fear of a failure to communicate. May this inclination (delusion?) guide me to the completion of my first novel!
That line hit me hard--I was just thinking about why continuing to write matters and that was what answered for me--a fear of failure to communicate. Communing with others through life's experiences--through writing--is everything.
George - thanks for the advice! And perhaps you've covered this, but I think one of the best ways of honing your revision abilities is reading widely. Literature isn't created (or judged) in a vacuum. Discovering what you like in other authors helps you discover how to bring forth these qualities in your own writing.
Amen! You tickled my curiosity. Check out Jane Austen's reading list. I wonder if it made a difference that books back then were very expensive, rarely purchased, and more commonly borrowed.
Re: “I've noticed that when my partner…fails to engage with his usual enthusiasm…it affects me.”
Same! I have done this a sum total of one time but - after I shared an idea for a project with some friends and didn’t get the love/praise/support I needed in that moment, I felt low. So I walked around my apartment after they left and said out loud to myself the praise I needed to hear. Crazy? Yes. Did it help. Hell yes.
It’s hard but I frequently have to remind myself to “fill in the blanks for the praise” not for the opposite. No one said it’s bad! Ideas are little babies that can’t yet be judged in that way.
Nope, not crazy at all, Kate. Exactly right. And not out of some push of egomania. If you think it's right, it's at least worth exploring. How much great stuff in the world would we all be minus if every pooh-pooh had been heeded?
I go to a workshop / retreat every year in July, Wildacres in Little Switzerland, N.C.. We have frequent readings sometimes every night. Anybody who wants to read has exactly four minutes to do so. The feedback from a sympathetic, curious audience of trained ears is a powerful tonic. The feedback comes in all forms, the mood of the room as one reads, the applause at the end, and the persons who approach afterwards and volunteer some praise or reflections. Then there is yourself, on stage, reading, forced into the role of a reader and extraordinarily sensitized to gaffs.
This question and a few points here have come up for me in the last couple of years with regard to my agent. I first started working with him in 2019. His feedback on the novel we signed on was usually more robust than I would be hoping, but after a few days of stewing, I would realize his comments were helpful and I got excited about how I could go about addressing them and make the novel better. For whatever reason, the novel never sold, but overall, working with the agent at that point was a positive and helpful experience overall.
However, the responses to the last couple of things I sent him (a bunch of stories and later a novella) felt really bad. With these, like the questioner's partner, I could perceive a clear lack of enthusiasm. And then his lengthy comments were not how to make editorial changes to improve what I was doing but essentially to completely rewrite everything as something else entirely and only remotely related to what I had done (I exaggerate maybe slightly). When I started back on revising those pieces, I felt that I was no longer writing my fiction with his input but being asked to write toward some vague idea of what he wanted. I couldn't do that. I didn't want to. I already have a job as a certain type of writer, and I don't want writing fiction outside of my job to have the dynamic of employee/employer.
At that point, I decided that I could only write for myself as the reader. I set those projects aside (because I couldn't work on them without the agent in mind) and went back to another novel I had started and set aside. It was so bad. It really was. But I found a new way into it and began to have a lot of fun. Instead of third-person, it is now told from five first-person perspectives. I let myself do some wacky things. Break some rules. (Freakification?) I also simplified some complicated and confusing chronology I had previously designed for no good reason. And now I feel that it's good because, yes, I like reading it, I love working on it, and I find when I'm not working on it that I have an urge to be hanging out with those characters. As George has said many times, if you are having fun, there's a much better chance readers will, too (ok, that's obviously not a quote and much better said in all of these posts). And of course I still would love for the new novel to be published, have a wide audience, and get positive response from readers and critics, but I also realize (as George's post points out is a fact for many) that my work may never receive wide publication. And so, for me, loving these characters and spending time with them is enough for me to say it is good because that may have to be enough--and it is enough because I consider it time well spent.
Also maybe a thought worth sharing: I just sent the new manuscript to a novelist and teacher I knew years ago who always seemed to get my work. While I didn't think of her as the reader while writing, I realized that (after the last couple of demoralizing experiences) I wanted initial feedback on the draft to come from someone I felt would be critical but also appreciative. I am confident that there is plenty to appreciate. So I think finding the right first reader(s) may be a technique I keep in mind when getting initial feedback.
I felt a bit wimpy for getting demoralized over the agent's responses and for needing to find new strategies for feedback, so thank you for being honest about how hard this can be.
A quote from Dinaw Mengestu comes to mind that I've gone back to many times over the years. It's a different angle than the having fun idea, but perhaps shares something in terms of being your own reader: "And in case it’s possible to forget—remember the world does not need your book. The world will go on just fine without it. There are plenty of wonderful novels, poems, stories, essays for many lifetimes of extraordinary reading, and so write out of necessity, out of personal privation, because you, and perhaps only you, needs to read those words."
“And now I feel that it's good because, yes, I like reading it, I love working on it, and I find when I'm not working on it that I have an urge to be hanging out with those characters. “
Exactly, this is exactly how I feel sometimes too and when I don’t, I know it’s break time come back and revise, or change things up radically.
As someone who’s unsure he’ll ever publish for a wider audience, even the handful of folks who I’ve shared my pieces with, when a few of them say “I really loved this part”, even that is more than enough. When I love the direction, that’s when I really get excited. No matter what, George’s advice has moved mountains for me.
Troy, I'll see your wimp and raise you BigWimp. I wrote a big historical novel that I worked on long and hard, improving my writing a great deal (I thought, and I reasonably believe I was right). My then agent (who had sold my previous novel) wasn't bitchy about it, said I was indeed writing better and that her mind kept going back to the characters, but... She made editorial suggestions that would have involved a total unpicking and rebuilding of the whole thing. She then said I was free to take it elsewhere if I thought I should do that, but that the novel as it stood would not be published anywhere in the world. She was a player in international deals, and I didn't doubt her opinion was authoritative.
I didn't like her suggestions (though I tried to be positive about them). They seemed to me to ignore an essential strength of my version. So I didn't rewrite, and slid the novel out of sight on a hard drive and in one (or two) of those digital pigeonholes provided by Internet.
That flat commercial statement hit me over the head. I didn't write fiction at all for some years after that. (No basement cleaning, we don't have a basement).
So some wimp. And foolish too. I know now I should have gone back to work. If only there'd been a Story Club... ;)
thanks, george, as always. I have learned that if i sit down to revise and the work seems dull, i should shut off the computer and wait a day. sometimes my inner rhythm is ALL off. I know my rhythm, and if the next day, it's still awkward, then I dig in to explore. Often though the story just needs a bit more cooking. My chosen readers have different skills. one, who tries to rewrite or line edit is instead a fabulous diagnostician. There's a hole and she finds it. Another "gets" my message but always wants "less.' i have to think about that. some stories are strong on event. some need history to flesh out the people. I trust my own judgment on that. I do have two readers who catch some of that. And that keeps me confidant in my own process. And so on. At some point i listen to everybody but mainly to whether anything in me says, okay, yeah. let's see. My worst moment, that cost me I won't say what in writing joy, okay, I'll say: a year. Was a former agent who said I was no longer a "real" writer. Ouch. Not a George, that one. All anger, no love.
how awful critics can be, how simple it is to find the negative. ugh. I'm reminded of the bad reviews of Keats and how his friends believed it was what really killed him. Words matter--and what a beautiful reminder to act out of love, not anger to ourselves and others.
Hmm, all anger, no love. Sometimes we can be like this with ourselves and other times the reader (in whatever form) can be like this with us. I guess the only way to survive this is to become ourselves more love and less anger. Thank you for this beautiful thought.
Wow. That agent. Harsh. That'd make a good story though, what happened in that year in the mind of the writer. Her telling her friends what the agent said, what their reactions were.
First, congrats and well deserved! You offer so much, so generously.
I was deeply engaged with this response to your reader's very good question--one that I also struggle with. And I appreciated the answer that first we are writing to please ourselves, and we are our own gatekeeper of the writing's excellence and standards. But, as you say, it's a fragile hold on a fragile reality for many of us. The rejections that abound in this creative line of work as well as the successes can set us back equally.
But the bigger question for me, maybe for your reader too, so thanks for addressing it, is: who IS this ideal reader, the person we are trying to communicate with? Why would they care about what I am trying to say in this piece of writing or art? It feels like it comes down to ourselves, who we are, and what of that we're trying to communicate. This isn't a new idea, but it's one I've personally been playing with lately, as another novel comes out and I try to understand how to speak about it. Does it come down to the meaning of the creation? Not just what it's about but what it's about in our lives?
I've had readers love my work and others shrug it off--one reviewer on Goodreads said, Not enough sex in this book, which set me laughing and also stung--was I supposed to put more sex in? I didn't want to, it didn't fit the YA coming of age queer novel at all. It would've meant my narrator was searching outside herself instead of inside, in my view at that time. But what do we do with that kind of reaction? Does it etch away at our confidence, if there's enough reviews that don't get close to what we intended?
I hope this conversation about the ideal reader, or whatever you want to name it, continues. It's rich and a huge part of the writing life. Thank you again for all you give to us.
From one Mary to another: Thank you for this. Coincidentally (?) my response happens to follow yours. Happy writing. Love your Facebook posts and your new Substack. Congratulations on your new book. Can’t wait to read it.❤️
Congrats on the prize, George! I've got my sights set on the Giller Prize.(Canadian, eh.) As for that inner voice telling me what does, and doesn't work, yeah, sometimes I feel it's broken. I'll put something aside for months at a time, work on something else, and then come back to whatever it is I was working on before, with fresh eyes. I basically write for myself first. There's no one else here. My problem is that I seldom get comments about my writing. I know they're long, and they're broken into segments that come out once a week, but they're all tied together with a link to the previous segment, but still, when it comes to comments, for the most part it's crickets. So I don't know if I'm any good or not. I 'm filled with doubts, just as much as the next person. But when it comes right down to it, I like it, and that's all that matters. Once I hit that button and send it out into the world, it's no longer mine. Anyone that reads it has the right to say it was with fantastic, or it was shit. I give myself a week to write 2000 words. I sometimes wonder how I would react if someone critiqued my work. I used to be in a writing group that was started by MARK LAWRENCE (he was unpublished all the time we were on that group), and he said he liked my writing; he enjoyed reading it. That's the sort of encouragement we all want and need. Sometimes it only takes one person to help you move forward. But when you edit as you go along, you're constantly questioning yourself, and like you said, what works for one doesn't work for everyone.
I write songs. You hermits, you pure writers, all that clicking and tapping in solitude, and then, when you're done, you've yet to even launch your little Sunfish of self-esteem into those polluted waters. You don't get to trot out 15 new and various chapters to a coffeehouse audience who expects, well, about what we all expect when we take our eyes off our phones for a sec and look up at the person with the guitar and a mic squinting in the bad lighting. You don't get the chance to work the audience with a few jokes or mysterious mumbles between tunes. But you also don't get to die in public quite so, how shall I put it?...publicly. It's my entrenched notion that the "me" I write my songs for needs unpacking, conceptually. Escher, anyone? I mean I walk around imaginary furniture all day long when I think I'm "alone". I'm questing for the zeitgeist, who has all of our IP addresses. C'mon, I'm writing a song....who do you think I'm writing if for? All the yous. Who else is there? Who else am I?
‘…your little Sunfish of self-esteem….’ I don’t know what a sunfish is but I love this and I’ll take it with me and nurture it. My little sunfish of self-esteem riding the stormy oceans every time I publish a new piece. ☀️🐠
C'mon... You have your lonely hours of self doubt and frustration with the words same as us writers! In the end, we do it for us, because nothing lasts, well regarded or not, especially now at the end of time.
This is off-topic, but. . . I’ve just reread The Great Gatsby, and I was struck by Nick Carraway’s description of Tom Buchanan:
"Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body."
It reminded me of Isaac Babel’s Savitsky in “My First Goose” (the Boris Dralyuk translation we read in March '22):
"Savitsky, the Sixth Division commander, rose when he saw me, and I marvelled at the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose and—with the purple of his breeches, with his crimson cap tilted to one side, with the decorations hammered into his chest—cut the hut in half, as a banner cuts the sky. He smelt of perfume and the overwhelmingly sweet coolness of soap. His long legs looked like a pair of girls clad in shiny shoulder-length jackboots. He smiled at me, slapped his whip against the table and reached for the order that the chief of staff had just dictated."
Which brings me to Jennifer Croft, the wife of Boris Dralyuk. She was featured In NY Times Book Review’s “By the Book” on June 29 (an issue dedicated to translation). She wrote: “I fell in love with my husband, Boris Dralyuk, as he was translating Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Tales” from Russian. He wooed me by recounting the tales every evening on my doorstep as he picked me up for dinner, carefully, paragraph by paragraph.”
My "Wow!" expresses my, our, admiration for your "How" George... never once has opening a Story Club Newsletter, whether this side of the paywall on Thursday or t'other side on Sunday, disappointed.
My three top takeaways, in the immediacy of this passing moment, are these:
1st ~ That the reviewer who opined that your wrote better from 'love' than 'anger' called it, somehow, right and, better still, what first stung stuck... nothing of yours that I've read so far, with the anticipated joys of the lots still left to read on the road ahead, has disappointed.
2nd ~ I'm finding myself ruminating on whether there is anything 'imaginary' about readers? In the first instance the writer is the reader and ultimately, and in broadest terms, the readership of a shorts such as 'Sticks' or a long such as 'Lincoln...' are real human beings, that is 'real' not 'imagined'.
3rd ~ I don't find myself reading 'not like' as being akin to 'react against'. I've certainly found myself, for example, provoked to reacting deeply in the wake of re-reading Claire Keegan's short story 'So Late in the Day'. I liked it when I first read it in 2022 because it gave me pause for thought; I find myself liking it, frankly much more than I might ever imagined I would or could, on re-reading it now in 2023 because
(a) I'm rather more insightful as to the way the words have 'technically' been laid, layered and play across the pages of a story that is not a word more or less than it needs to be
(b) I'm finding her story has put a taper to a touch paper of not a critiquing but a creating response, or maybe a creative riposte, to what I've 'copped' about where she's coming from in 'So Late in the Day'.
Imagine that eh? The reader I recall, or imagined, being a year ago is nothing like the reader I'm sensing, or imagining, myself to be roughly fourteen months later.
George - The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction you've been awarded is such a well-deserved honor. Congratulations! You briefly noted this honor, and it seemed, barely stopped to take a breath before telling us about your drive south and a visit to Steinbeck’s house. It is such a privilege to be part of Story Club and all you share with us here. Thank you so much for all that you do!
Thank you, Charlie. I am finding myself really moved by that Prize.
Wonderful!
You should be moved, George. I’m moved that someone who has moved me (through your writing as well as your teaching) as much as you have has also moved the bestowers of such a rarified literary honor to bestow that honor on you. Of all the writers I admire, I can’t think of any that I’d say I’m proud of except you. I’m proud of you, George.
The man slept as the woman read A Swim in the Pond in the Rain on her iPad, making exclamatory sounds that woke him up. She didn’t typically make noises when she read. But this was George Saunders, and she felt different when she read his books, almost as if she was having an affair right there in bed, next to the man she’d been married to for
forty years. Over several nights, she read as he slept. Sometimes he got up to use the bathroom. When he did, she’d return the iPad to the her nightstand, setting aside her guilty pleasure.
She thought about the clothes hanging on the line in Tolstoy’s “Master and Man.” It was a stunning insight Saunders had shared: the clothes were shouting a warning, that each of the three - was it three? - times the doomed travelers passed by, the storm’s fury increased and the clothes on the line signaled that things were not going to end happily. She closed her eyes around that image. It felt vivid. It seemed to be gesturing to her as well. Life is short, it said. Take it back before the storm takes you. Go out and do something with that MFA. Eventually, she fell asleep.
Two years passed. He got his diagnosis. The disease progressed, slowly and then rapidly. When he went to hospice, she stayed with him, often overnight. She read as he slept. Among the books she read was Lincoln in the Bardo. She’d read it many times, but it held a special meaning now. A different view of death? It was comforting, and hilarious. It made the difficult time more bearable.
One night he woke up. She reached over to push the button that summoned the nurse. But he didn’t want the nurse. He wanted to know if she was reading George Saunders.
She held up her copy of his latest book, Liberation Day.
“Yes,” she said. “I confess. I’ve been unfaithful to you.”
“I knew it,” he replied. “Why else would you be reading so late into the night? Then hiding your iPad. As if you could keep your secret.”
He smiled. The nurse came with his pain meds.
After he left, he said, “That story. ‘Sticks.’
It’s my favorite. It’s on my IPad.”
She was surprised. He did not read much literary fiction. He enjoyed science fiction, history, and books about the cosmos.
“One of mine, too,” she said.
He smiled again. “It’s my favorite. Please read it to me.”
She read. A story so Saunders: sad, poignant, funny. He smiled. She thought she saw a tear. He died two weeks later.
My reader, the one I see as I write, is the one who knows how to read me. And knows of my long love affair with George Saunders. And tells me, again, to write, or he will come after me in his Bardo form, a shirt flapping on a clothesline, saying Life is short. Use your MFA.
Write your truth.
Aw, jeez, Mary, you made my day, week, month. Much love and gratitude to you and to "him," there in that beautiful place where I'm sure he is.
George, thank you. I was ready to edit out a couple of the “He smiled,” iterations as embarrassing and amateurish but left them in because I want more than anything to remember that smile. He is in a good place: a black plastic box on my - uh, her - dining room table. Sometimes she picks him up and walks around the house, pointing out the nice things he left for her in this world.❤️
Hello Mary,
I wrote this for you. You and I have much in common.
The woman and her husband were elderly, and their five dogs were also very old. So sweet Maggie’s death was not a shock, just a sadness. In their forty years together, the couple had buried a lot of dogs on their small property, and they were no longer sure of where all the graves were. It was December, and the ground was cold and hard. So when her husband went into the garage and came out slow and weary carrying the shovel, she said, “Let’s just take her to the vet and have her cremated.” And so they did.
Sweet Maggie came back in a sad little box. So small, so sad. She didn’t know what to do with it. She wanted Maggie to be in a good place. So she put her on the top shelf of the closet, next to my mother and my sister, Loretta - uh, her mother, her sister. “There,’ she said. “That’s a good place for you.”
And then she kissed her husband goodnight and went to bed with George.
This is beautiful. What a lovely gift. I’ve lost many beloved pets - cats, mostly - over my lifetime. I now live with a twenty-one-year-old Siberian named Mini who has been to the edge more than her allotted nine times. In March, I had to bring her to the vet four times, at a total cost of over a thousand dollars. My husband passed in April. Mini stays close to me, especially at night, when she sniffs the side of the bed that he slept on, and then pushes her tiny body up against my large, soft one and stays there until I pull out Lincoln in the Bardo, put my knees up, making a kind of tent where she feels safe as I spend the night with George.
Oh, yes, cats, too. We have three lovely ones right now. I hope Mini has lots more time with you. Your husband's passing is so recent that I know your pain is sharp and raw. I'm thinking of you.
Cats are deeply intuitive. We comfort each other. It’s hard to believe she’s so old. She’s been close to death’s door many times and always returns. Knowing her time will come - most likely soon - is hard. Thinking of all the sweetness she’s brought to the world makes it somewhat easier.
💙💓💙💞
Oh, Mary! How beautiful! I'm getting ready to read Lincoln in the Bardo again--I've read it twice (back-to-back, immediately after finishing it, I flipped it over and began again!) Because of my reading habits and my husband's apnea, we sleep in separate rooms. Often as I trundle off to my room, I say, "Goodnight. Going to bed with George." And he smiles and says "Have fun." He too has read several stories now and will be reading more. Thank you for this gift on this beautiful and fragile morning.
Oh, Nancy. This is so wonderful. I’m glad I could share my story and thank you for sharing yours. How lovely to hear that I’m not alone - and maybe not at all perverse. We can balance our relationships with a great writer and great husbands. Give your guy a hug from me.❤️
So lovely Mary, thank you for the richness you add to this group and this world. Reminds me of when my dad was in his final days at home with pancreatic cancer, I can picture my stepmom doing the same.
Wayne, you are so kind. I know that your dad is smiling.
Hi Mary- I'm new to commenting as of last week's intro... and so I don't know you beyond this post here, but you've brought tears to my eyes. I know about reading in the hospital, about reading as grief looms over me, and even about hiding my nighttime reading (or trying to!) Just wanted to say thank you for this. I'm glad you are here using your MFA, and I hope you gift it to the outside world too.
Maritza - I haven’t commented much, but the self-introductions George invited us to make put me in touch with some brave souls who are also experiencing grief. It’s good to know that we’re not alone, and that while the pain is there, the memories can be a way of moving us forward. And I really do believe that if I don’t share my writing, my husband will come after me. He was a gentle soul in this world, but who knows what will happen in the Bardo.
I love this poly-literati love story!!
Thank you, David.❤️
Mary, I am in awe of your genius..
I read your comments and they are fascinating informative insightful inspiring empathic and I could go on.. I loved this particular reminiscence
It touched me deeply.
I’ll read you all day long and I hope you appreciate your own words
I’m one I’m sure of many… devoted readers of your posts
You are really “something”!
Marcy, you are so very kind. I have been through many things in my life that have kept me from writing. It’s not easy to share my work. But you give me hope that I can connect, on Story Club and elsewhere. Much love.❤️
Listen, Mary…
I have no idea of your age … not that it matters except in ensuring that you have experienced birth life death and all the various ways these passages choose to deliver their beautiful and ugly selves…
As for writing and connecting???
I don’t have to read your “work” …
The writings on this site are as much you as your fiction or non fiction..,
Maybe even more so …
I have read and listened to some small amounts of George’s work … and yet based on all he writes to us …
I think I am a “George” groupie… and a huge fan of anything and everything he writes here…
And you for me are def in that category as far as your writings and comments …
I learn much from you
I learn much from the originator of story club..,
How I got here I can’t remember…
But you are def a connecting line of influence and information and teaching…
Connecting …if I haven’t made myself clear
Not your problem!
Marcy, I am deeply honored that you read and care about my posts. I came to this place through a Story Club invitation that arrived in my inbox. Followed it here, and discovered a real and vibrant community. Since my husband passed, I’ve found it uniquely comforting to show up on Thursdays and Sundays and post if the spirit moves me. I’ve been in online forums before, but none approached this as level of respect, trust, and intimacy. It allows me to reach into turbulent emotions to find the words I didn’t know were there. It’s a blessing and a gift and something hard to explain. It’s different from writing in solitude. Being among others who share the value of kindness as the source of all good endeavors brings a new dimension to writing, as it does to life.
Amen
My day job is being an actor, and reviews are a fact, and there are as many ways of handling it as there are artists who have breathed. Understanding that reviewing is itself an art, is the most helpful. A parallel art, a symbiotic art. When an actor performs, they have painstakingly toiled to free the word from the page, to have it float in the vortex that bubbles between us, transformed. And it always seems so ironic to me, that the first thing that happens, opening night, is those words are ripped from the air, and stapled right back down by a reviewer, of all people. But we NEED the reviewer. The reviewer is the member of our society who LOVES our art form as much as we do, these people devote their lives to pursuing its divinity, just like us. So, of course, they have an agenda, the same as we do—they have opinions about where and how the form should develop, ways and means that they adore and abhor. And sometimes, the reviewer who comes to your show, maybe they’re your favorite staff member on the paper, well, they’ve got their panties in a twist because they didn’t get assigned to cover the West End in London, no, they had to stay home and cover for the other reviewer, and so they saw seven shows in a row, and they have a deadline. So they were crabby. And they hated it. They wanted it to be something else. Sometimes I adopt this strategy: I have a trusted loved one read the review. Then I ask them questions that reveal the review in a manner I am ready to receive: eg generally positive or generally negative? Did they like the lights? (Cuz I happen to KNOW the lights are fantastic) Did they comment on this moment? What did they think of the lead? Gradually comparing what I know to be true (to myself) and stacking it against where they are coming from, so I can see the thing from more of a distance, and it feels like part of something larger, less of an individual attack, and more of a questioning, a probing. And then you are allowed to construct a response, either just in yourself, or actually draft it. So that your intentions become clearer to yourself, and you can get back out there, which you must do, that very evening, and give it your all, knowing that most of the audience will have these other words plastered in their minds as they watch you, you have to know that much more about what you are really trying for, and give the audience that thing, that you made, that you believe in. Ultimately, I think you have to believe that it is ALL one big process, it is all liquid, and you are moving towards something, all the time, it’s like light from the stars—it’s billions of years old by the time we see it, they could be ANYWHERE by now. You’re part of it. Whether you like it or not. So figure out the best way for you to like it. To love it. We are the lucky ones.
That was my first thought as well: you have to burn 🔥 for the idea that you want to put in the world. The rest is semantics.
Thank you, Claudia; I think it helps to know that your little fire is part of a moving constellation. That your electron spinning in the dark is creating the possibility of new bonds, new molecules, forming and reforming, that simply the act of creating is a conversation, about what can become possible one day. A long time ago, my son and I were walking home from 2nd grade, and I asked him how it was going. He said, well in reading today, I made a connection, and then I made a connection to that connection, and then I made a connection that had nothing to do with school….and he trailed off. And I said, well, I think that’s probably the best thing you could hope for, did you like that connection? And he smiled so huge and said YES. And when he got home he drew for hours. I’ll never forget that day.
What did he draw I wonder. How marvelous that your son turns to art for expression. My daughter is an illustrator & even as a little girl turned to paper/pens. She had/has a language processing disorder but none on paper or canvas or wood. There she flies. I wish the same for your son. To be able to immediately express oneself in art or words or sound is a gift of self soothing that nothing else gives🌷
Gorgeous moment with your son! When I started imagining my secondary worlds and writing down the first drafts of those ideas I thought to myself: this is like playing, I’d forgotten the joy of simply getting absorbed in play. Of drawing for hours like your son did that day. I hope that he still plays.
The late Jerry Garcia said of the Grateful Dead: "Not everyone likes us, but those who like us REALLY like us."
Lawrence Olivier was asked why he acted. His response: "Look at me, look at me, look at me."
Back in my personal Pleistocene (or it may have been the Cambrian) I read an interview that the acclaimed jazz critic and producer Leonard Feather did with legendary saxophonist Paul Desmond. During the conversation, Feather asked Desmond his take on audience reaction. Desmond replied (and I paraphrase for the sake of brevity) that after a particularly dismal performance it was not unheard of to be complimented on his virtuosity, just as after a particularly stellar performance it was not unheard of to be offered condolences.
The huddled masses of the great unwashed make a fickle mistress. Best to navigate that landscape with practiced indifference and jaundiced eye.
What a great example. What if what we consider a stellar performance deviates from what the audience considers a stellar performance? I would want to bring the audience where I stand and not walk with my saxophone to ‘where they want me to be’. Now how do I do that without losing the fickle mistress?
The more links we get in a post the more I love it. Can't wait to read the Guardian piece. Free gift with purchase!
What a thoughtful question. I'm friends with a man who became a local art critic for two local weekly magazines, and later, a monthly magazine, he did this work for several years. I knew his opinions, I'd known him for a long time, he was my college roommate. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes I didn't, and slowly stopped reading at all. Now I rarely pay attention to critics. I see that critics (and even online reviews) are how books, art, films, albums, etc. get pushed to the front so we can find these things. I know how crucial it is, but I do have a feeling that there are books out there, essays, plays, poems, that I'd love to experience but didn't get the attention needed to propel forward, or even get published.
Congrats on the prize!
Loved your thoughts on this.
There are so many factors at play when something gets noticed and pushed forward. It’s about being at the right place, time and having the right connections. It’s about actively seeking and lubricating the network that will push you forward. Not everyone can do this, not everyone has access to it, not every piece of good writing will be pushed forward.
Thank you, Claudia! As a reader, I'm glad to see that different people are getting published now by artists from various walks of life. I regret the limited material we had when I was in high school in the 1980s.. We didn't even get Baldwin at my high school! I think that's changing, too. People are starting to wonder about all of it, challenge it.
It's a good thing that writing is getting democratised. I like to see the curated works of writers in schools, public libraries, book stores, but I also love discovering writers here on Substack tackling topics and themes that are not considered 'profitable' by the publishing houses (yet). Each voice has a unique take on the world and I love the diversity. I also see it as an opportunity for people to engage more with writing and develop their capacity to think and formulate their worldviews. Now that we're moving on from writing for the google algorithm I'm quite optimistic about the future of writing.
I agree. It's refreshing! I just read bell hooks for the first time last year, wish I'd known about her sooner. Lately I'm drawn to female writers, not on purpose, it just seems to happen that way. Favs right now are Claire Dederer, Jenny Offill, (reading Weather now), and of course my fav Clare Keegan.
I can't help but share your enthusiasm--and write often about overlooked women writers, in particular, and how history has obscured their work... it's so vital that their voices are there and are known more widely.
Glad George is on that path, too. Looking forward to more stories.
Thanks for the recommendations, didn't have a chance to read any of these writers.
Thanks for the Claire Keegan tip.
I am now in a sustained period of reform, in which I mostly steer clear of white male writers. The greatest reward (so far) was reading Zora Neale Hurston's operatic "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and giving myself license to read Jane Austen and Virginia Wolf's Mrs. Dalloway. I listen to the latter on audiobook and replay chapters over and over again to pick up the detail I missed on the first, second, third... audit.
It's all so refreshing.
Yay, John! Me, too.
I find that whether I consider my work good or not can often depend on my mood. One day it seems brilliant and the next day foolish. I have to put it away for a while, long enough to disassociate myself from it so I can read it as if it were new to me. I never consider an audience because if I write to an audience that is other than me, I distort what I want to say to please them or what I think will please them and then I get tangled up in untruths and misunderstandings, the sticky web between me and them. The whole point of writing it seems to me is to tell a story about yourself, whatever form it takes, so the story has to be true for you and as well told as you can manage if it has any prayer of being read or understood by someone else. First it has to be a true thing and only you the writer knows whether that's so.
One true sentence at a time, adding up to a true story. Thanks so much for this!
I try to remember and draw inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut's lovingly singular muse:
"I write with my sister in mind. The jokes are ones that she would enjoy."
Found in this article: https://www.hoosierhistorylive.org/mail/2015-11-14.html, but he also says something similar in an interview with the Paris Review.
“'George Saunders has an uncanny ability to reveal the complexities of life and death in his writing; in doing so, he points to the truth of our shared human condition,' said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden." George, congratulations! Hayden's assessment is spot on.
How do I know when what I'm writing is good? As you say, George, I know because it delights me to read it. But I frequently teeter toward self-doubt, especially in the draft of others' critical words. On the other hand, my love of writing still carries more weight than my fear of a failure to communicate. May this inclination (delusion?) guide me to the completion of my first novel!
“…my love of writing still carries more weight than my fear of a failure to communicate.” I needed to be reminded of this, many thanks!
That line hit me hard--I was just thinking about why continuing to write matters and that was what answered for me--a fear of failure to communicate. Communing with others through life's experiences--through writing--is everything.
Keep on writing Michael. Love the love of writing. Delighted to read this so carry on.
Thank you, Gloria!
George - thanks for the advice! And perhaps you've covered this, but I think one of the best ways of honing your revision abilities is reading widely. Literature isn't created (or judged) in a vacuum. Discovering what you like in other authors helps you discover how to bring forth these qualities in your own writing.
Amen! You tickled my curiosity. Check out Jane Austen's reading list. I wonder if it made a difference that books back then were very expensive, rarely purchased, and more commonly borrowed.
https://janeausteninvermont.blog/books/jane-austens-reading-a-list/
Re: “I've noticed that when my partner…fails to engage with his usual enthusiasm…it affects me.”
Same! I have done this a sum total of one time but - after I shared an idea for a project with some friends and didn’t get the love/praise/support I needed in that moment, I felt low. So I walked around my apartment after they left and said out loud to myself the praise I needed to hear. Crazy? Yes. Did it help. Hell yes.
It’s hard but I frequently have to remind myself to “fill in the blanks for the praise” not for the opposite. No one said it’s bad! Ideas are little babies that can’t yet be judged in that way.
Nope, not crazy at all, Kate. Exactly right. And not out of some push of egomania. If you think it's right, it's at least worth exploring. How much great stuff in the world would we all be minus if every pooh-pooh had been heeded?
I go to a workshop / retreat every year in July, Wildacres in Little Switzerland, N.C.. We have frequent readings sometimes every night. Anybody who wants to read has exactly four minutes to do so. The feedback from a sympathetic, curious audience of trained ears is a powerful tonic. The feedback comes in all forms, the mood of the room as one reads, the applause at the end, and the persons who approach afterwards and volunteer some praise or reflections. Then there is yourself, on stage, reading, forced into the role of a reader and extraordinarily sensitized to gaffs.
This question and a few points here have come up for me in the last couple of years with regard to my agent. I first started working with him in 2019. His feedback on the novel we signed on was usually more robust than I would be hoping, but after a few days of stewing, I would realize his comments were helpful and I got excited about how I could go about addressing them and make the novel better. For whatever reason, the novel never sold, but overall, working with the agent at that point was a positive and helpful experience overall.
However, the responses to the last couple of things I sent him (a bunch of stories and later a novella) felt really bad. With these, like the questioner's partner, I could perceive a clear lack of enthusiasm. And then his lengthy comments were not how to make editorial changes to improve what I was doing but essentially to completely rewrite everything as something else entirely and only remotely related to what I had done (I exaggerate maybe slightly). When I started back on revising those pieces, I felt that I was no longer writing my fiction with his input but being asked to write toward some vague idea of what he wanted. I couldn't do that. I didn't want to. I already have a job as a certain type of writer, and I don't want writing fiction outside of my job to have the dynamic of employee/employer.
At that point, I decided that I could only write for myself as the reader. I set those projects aside (because I couldn't work on them without the agent in mind) and went back to another novel I had started and set aside. It was so bad. It really was. But I found a new way into it and began to have a lot of fun. Instead of third-person, it is now told from five first-person perspectives. I let myself do some wacky things. Break some rules. (Freakification?) I also simplified some complicated and confusing chronology I had previously designed for no good reason. And now I feel that it's good because, yes, I like reading it, I love working on it, and I find when I'm not working on it that I have an urge to be hanging out with those characters. As George has said many times, if you are having fun, there's a much better chance readers will, too (ok, that's obviously not a quote and much better said in all of these posts). And of course I still would love for the new novel to be published, have a wide audience, and get positive response from readers and critics, but I also realize (as George's post points out is a fact for many) that my work may never receive wide publication. And so, for me, loving these characters and spending time with them is enough for me to say it is good because that may have to be enough--and it is enough because I consider it time well spent.
Also maybe a thought worth sharing: I just sent the new manuscript to a novelist and teacher I knew years ago who always seemed to get my work. While I didn't think of her as the reader while writing, I realized that (after the last couple of demoralizing experiences) I wanted initial feedback on the draft to come from someone I felt would be critical but also appreciative. I am confident that there is plenty to appreciate. So I think finding the right first reader(s) may be a technique I keep in mind when getting initial feedback.
I felt a bit wimpy for getting demoralized over the agent's responses and for needing to find new strategies for feedback, so thank you for being honest about how hard this can be.
A quote from Dinaw Mengestu comes to mind that I've gone back to many times over the years. It's a different angle than the having fun idea, but perhaps shares something in terms of being your own reader: "And in case it’s possible to forget—remember the world does not need your book. The world will go on just fine without it. There are plenty of wonderful novels, poems, stories, essays for many lifetimes of extraordinary reading, and so write out of necessity, out of personal privation, because you, and perhaps only you, needs to read those words."
“And now I feel that it's good because, yes, I like reading it, I love working on it, and I find when I'm not working on it that I have an urge to be hanging out with those characters. “
Exactly, this is exactly how I feel sometimes too and when I don’t, I know it’s break time come back and revise, or change things up radically.
As someone who’s unsure he’ll ever publish for a wider audience, even the handful of folks who I’ve shared my pieces with, when a few of them say “I really loved this part”, even that is more than enough. When I love the direction, that’s when I really get excited. No matter what, George’s advice has moved mountains for me.
Troy, I'll see your wimp and raise you BigWimp. I wrote a big historical novel that I worked on long and hard, improving my writing a great deal (I thought, and I reasonably believe I was right). My then agent (who had sold my previous novel) wasn't bitchy about it, said I was indeed writing better and that her mind kept going back to the characters, but... She made editorial suggestions that would have involved a total unpicking and rebuilding of the whole thing. She then said I was free to take it elsewhere if I thought I should do that, but that the novel as it stood would not be published anywhere in the world. She was a player in international deals, and I didn't doubt her opinion was authoritative.
I didn't like her suggestions (though I tried to be positive about them). They seemed to me to ignore an essential strength of my version. So I didn't rewrite, and slid the novel out of sight on a hard drive and in one (or two) of those digital pigeonholes provided by Internet.
That flat commercial statement hit me over the head. I didn't write fiction at all for some years after that. (No basement cleaning, we don't have a basement).
So some wimp. And foolish too. I know now I should have gone back to work. If only there'd been a Story Club... ;)
Thanks, John.
thanks, george, as always. I have learned that if i sit down to revise and the work seems dull, i should shut off the computer and wait a day. sometimes my inner rhythm is ALL off. I know my rhythm, and if the next day, it's still awkward, then I dig in to explore. Often though the story just needs a bit more cooking. My chosen readers have different skills. one, who tries to rewrite or line edit is instead a fabulous diagnostician. There's a hole and she finds it. Another "gets" my message but always wants "less.' i have to think about that. some stories are strong on event. some need history to flesh out the people. I trust my own judgment on that. I do have two readers who catch some of that. And that keeps me confidant in my own process. And so on. At some point i listen to everybody but mainly to whether anything in me says, okay, yeah. let's see. My worst moment, that cost me I won't say what in writing joy, okay, I'll say: a year. Was a former agent who said I was no longer a "real" writer. Ouch. Not a George, that one. All anger, no love.
how awful critics can be, how simple it is to find the negative. ugh. I'm reminded of the bad reviews of Keats and how his friends believed it was what really killed him. Words matter--and what a beautiful reminder to act out of love, not anger to ourselves and others.
Hmm, all anger, no love. Sometimes we can be like this with ourselves and other times the reader (in whatever form) can be like this with us. I guess the only way to survive this is to become ourselves more love and less anger. Thank you for this beautiful thought.
Wow. That agent. Harsh. That'd make a good story though, what happened in that year in the mind of the writer. Her telling her friends what the agent said, what their reactions were.
First, congrats and well deserved! You offer so much, so generously.
I was deeply engaged with this response to your reader's very good question--one that I also struggle with. And I appreciated the answer that first we are writing to please ourselves, and we are our own gatekeeper of the writing's excellence and standards. But, as you say, it's a fragile hold on a fragile reality for many of us. The rejections that abound in this creative line of work as well as the successes can set us back equally.
But the bigger question for me, maybe for your reader too, so thanks for addressing it, is: who IS this ideal reader, the person we are trying to communicate with? Why would they care about what I am trying to say in this piece of writing or art? It feels like it comes down to ourselves, who we are, and what of that we're trying to communicate. This isn't a new idea, but it's one I've personally been playing with lately, as another novel comes out and I try to understand how to speak about it. Does it come down to the meaning of the creation? Not just what it's about but what it's about in our lives?
I've had readers love my work and others shrug it off--one reviewer on Goodreads said, Not enough sex in this book, which set me laughing and also stung--was I supposed to put more sex in? I didn't want to, it didn't fit the YA coming of age queer novel at all. It would've meant my narrator was searching outside herself instead of inside, in my view at that time. But what do we do with that kind of reaction? Does it etch away at our confidence, if there's enough reviews that don't get close to what we intended?
I hope this conversation about the ideal reader, or whatever you want to name it, continues. It's rich and a huge part of the writing life. Thank you again for all you give to us.
From one Mary to another: Thank you for this. Coincidentally (?) my response happens to follow yours. Happy writing. Love your Facebook posts and your new Substack. Congratulations on your new book. Can’t wait to read it.❤️
Thank you, fellow Mary! Made my day.
Congrats on the prize, George! I've got my sights set on the Giller Prize.(Canadian, eh.) As for that inner voice telling me what does, and doesn't work, yeah, sometimes I feel it's broken. I'll put something aside for months at a time, work on something else, and then come back to whatever it is I was working on before, with fresh eyes. I basically write for myself first. There's no one else here. My problem is that I seldom get comments about my writing. I know they're long, and they're broken into segments that come out once a week, but they're all tied together with a link to the previous segment, but still, when it comes to comments, for the most part it's crickets. So I don't know if I'm any good or not. I 'm filled with doubts, just as much as the next person. But when it comes right down to it, I like it, and that's all that matters. Once I hit that button and send it out into the world, it's no longer mine. Anyone that reads it has the right to say it was with fantastic, or it was shit. I give myself a week to write 2000 words. I sometimes wonder how I would react if someone critiqued my work. I used to be in a writing group that was started by MARK LAWRENCE (he was unpublished all the time we were on that group), and he said he liked my writing; he enjoyed reading it. That's the sort of encouragement we all want and need. Sometimes it only takes one person to help you move forward. But when you edit as you go along, you're constantly questioning yourself, and like you said, what works for one doesn't work for everyone.
I write songs. You hermits, you pure writers, all that clicking and tapping in solitude, and then, when you're done, you've yet to even launch your little Sunfish of self-esteem into those polluted waters. You don't get to trot out 15 new and various chapters to a coffeehouse audience who expects, well, about what we all expect when we take our eyes off our phones for a sec and look up at the person with the guitar and a mic squinting in the bad lighting. You don't get the chance to work the audience with a few jokes or mysterious mumbles between tunes. But you also don't get to die in public quite so, how shall I put it?...publicly. It's my entrenched notion that the "me" I write my songs for needs unpacking, conceptually. Escher, anyone? I mean I walk around imaginary furniture all day long when I think I'm "alone". I'm questing for the zeitgeist, who has all of our IP addresses. C'mon, I'm writing a song....who do you think I'm writing if for? All the yous. Who else is there? Who else am I?
‘…your little Sunfish of self-esteem….’ I don’t know what a sunfish is but I love this and I’ll take it with me and nurture it. My little sunfish of self-esteem riding the stormy oceans every time I publish a new piece. ☀️🐠
C'mon... You have your lonely hours of self doubt and frustration with the words same as us writers! In the end, we do it for us, because nothing lasts, well regarded or not, especially now at the end of time.
This is off-topic, but. . . I’ve just reread The Great Gatsby, and I was struck by Nick Carraway’s description of Tom Buchanan:
"Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body."
It reminded me of Isaac Babel’s Savitsky in “My First Goose” (the Boris Dralyuk translation we read in March '22):
"Savitsky, the Sixth Division commander, rose when he saw me, and I marvelled at the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose and—with the purple of his breeches, with his crimson cap tilted to one side, with the decorations hammered into his chest—cut the hut in half, as a banner cuts the sky. He smelt of perfume and the overwhelmingly sweet coolness of soap. His long legs looked like a pair of girls clad in shiny shoulder-length jackboots. He smiled at me, slapped his whip against the table and reached for the order that the chief of staff had just dictated."
Which brings me to Jennifer Croft, the wife of Boris Dralyuk. She was featured In NY Times Book Review’s “By the Book” on June 29 (an issue dedicated to translation). She wrote: “I fell in love with my husband, Boris Dralyuk, as he was translating Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Tales” from Russian. He wooed me by recounting the tales every evening on my doorstep as he picked me up for dinner, carefully, paragraph by paragraph.”
Sweet, no?
Sweet exactly!
Prize 👍. Salinas 👍. Keegan 👍. Question 👍. Answer 👍. Discussion 👍.
My "Wow!" expresses my, our, admiration for your "How" George... never once has opening a Story Club Newsletter, whether this side of the paywall on Thursday or t'other side on Sunday, disappointed.
My three top takeaways, in the immediacy of this passing moment, are these:
1st ~ That the reviewer who opined that your wrote better from 'love' than 'anger' called it, somehow, right and, better still, what first stung stuck... nothing of yours that I've read so far, with the anticipated joys of the lots still left to read on the road ahead, has disappointed.
2nd ~ I'm finding myself ruminating on whether there is anything 'imaginary' about readers? In the first instance the writer is the reader and ultimately, and in broadest terms, the readership of a shorts such as 'Sticks' or a long such as 'Lincoln...' are real human beings, that is 'real' not 'imagined'.
3rd ~ I don't find myself reading 'not like' as being akin to 'react against'. I've certainly found myself, for example, provoked to reacting deeply in the wake of re-reading Claire Keegan's short story 'So Late in the Day'. I liked it when I first read it in 2022 because it gave me pause for thought; I find myself liking it, frankly much more than I might ever imagined I would or could, on re-reading it now in 2023 because
(a) I'm rather more insightful as to the way the words have 'technically' been laid, layered and play across the pages of a story that is not a word more or less than it needs to be
(b) I'm finding her story has put a taper to a touch paper of not a critiquing but a creating response, or maybe a creative riposte, to what I've 'copped' about where she's coming from in 'So Late in the Day'.
Imagine that eh? The reader I recall, or imagined, being a year ago is nothing like the reader I'm sensing, or imagining, myself to be roughly fourteen months later.