Thank you, George, for mentioning my Substack. All are welcome! We're having fun over there, so please join in.
I remember the first time George mentioned having fun while writing. I'd just completed a short story and I said so in one of these Story Club threads and George replied, "Fun, right?" And I was like...."Um.. I think so?" And ever since then, I've thought about the notion that writing ought to be fun. I'd never thought of it that way before. The idea of writing with abandon and just having fun while doing it--No fear. No voices. No big deal. Just writing. It changed things for me, those two little words: Fun, right? Thank you, George, as ever, for this seemingly simple yet altogether profound advice.
"HAVE FUN." That’s the best advice, sometimes the most difficult!
Hey, George and Story Clubbers, the other day I listed to a podcast called Ten Percent Happier. Bill Hader was the guest, and he chatted about anxiety (a real buzzkill, don’t I know it). Anyway, he dropped George’s name not once, but three times! What a blast to be besties with Bill Hader/ George Saunders. Anyway, if you have anxiety like I do, give it a listen. It’s Episode 706, it’s free, and about an hour.
I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with Mary's new compilation. Your recommendations have been my introduction to the contemporary short story (I was an art major). After I moved and got rid of so many books, I wasn’t going to buy any more, so I am trying out online libraries. Thank you, George, for supplying us with pdfs of the stories we read.
Ever since you first mentioned it, having fun has become my mantra. You made me realize that I have always loved fiddling with sentences and paragraphs, rearranging them, cutting/pasting them, tweaking them... and I’m enjoying it more and more as I get older. I used to drive my PhD students mad fiddling with their sentences, hoping that they would catch the bug. Some of them did. Now, if there were a SC in French I would point them here.
Last but not least, I’d like to add to your plug for Mary G’s substack – not only is it a lot of fun but it also complements SC perfectly. She posts her prompts on Monday. She’s given us three so far: a six-word story, a seven-sentence story and a one-sentence story. Looking forward to tomorrow's. Thank you, Mary.
1.How do you keep your characters straight with so many to juggle? How do you avoid the error if saying someone is blond in page 25 and bald in page 142?
2. How do you research characters with very different backgrounds than you? For imstanc3, I am a white middle class, 77-year-old male with a 50+year background as a print journalist. If I were to write a novel, I would want to include Black, Asian, and possibly other male & female characters with interesting and very different backgrounds from myself. How do I make those people real and not just white males in blackface?
George, thanks for parting the curtain, to some extent, and letting us see part of the process you undertook in writing your novel. As always, it's very helpul. It leads me to a question that I hope will be helpful for many of us.
Hemingway famously said, "The first draft of anything is shit." And other authors have confirmed that, encouraging us to just get the story down, then worry about craft later during the revision process. However, I've also read quite a few authors who say things such as, "I'm happy if I write 500 words a day" or "If I write 8 pages a week, I'm ecstatic." Either they're writing with their eyes closed, or their daily word count represents some mighty refined shit.
Why is it taking them so long to write that first draft if the bar is low and they're supposed to be postponing the revision process?
Thank you, questioner, and thank you, George. Today’s post is thrilling and exciting, especially George’s principle that such notions as a central character’s journey are “a subset of a greater thing - the story responding both to itself and to the reader’s constantly arising expectations.” (And also of needing only “enough backstory to make the current moment make sense.”)
The works of Sigrid Nunez, which I am now engrossed in and enchanted by, illustrate this notion of what a “story” can be. I am deep into reading and rereading The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and The Vulnerables, which are not traditional novels, but blends of memoir and fiction—digressive and essay-istic, spare yet chock-a-block with characters and their moments, anecdotes, philosophical ponderings, jokes, asides, stream-of-consciousness narration, history, current events, questions. Shades of Virginia Woolf and making a “novel” novel indeed. In each of these I have happily let go of expectations and followed the narrator wherever she takes me.
Fantastic list. Enough to keep me busy forever. Could I mention Raymond Carver. Poems and short stories. He might have been on the list and I buzzed through too fast. Wonderful of you to take the time to put it together. Thank you.
You are, consistently, one of my absolute favorite writing sages in a world full of dollar store “experts” screaming their answers to questions no one asked them.
Office Hours makes me feel a little more sane and hopeful every time, and I thank you for that. 🤍
Ah. This explains why the short fiction I most recommend and read multiple times and will read again was your 'Mother's Day'. The spin on the point of view, from one woman who I utterly comprehended to another who I resisted at first and then also comprehended was intoxicatingly great. The way these perspectives gave me insight into the man - their focus, is something I have returned to so many times. And the children, they were there too, begging for my attention.
I learned something about life on a deeper plane. Two truths. Three even. And more. Your pivot gave me permission to experiment with different fully focused points of view. The tragic, the comedic, the strange dance of life is that no one person is fully right all the time and we are connected in this dance and we can learn from each other.
So I learn way of pivoting and turning. Just when I think I understand another perspective challenges my perspective.
This is a technique I sued with my own novel The Seasonwife released in Aotearoa New Zealand last year which has been well reviewed and which is dancing along happily. I toyed with one pov but it wasn't enough. I knew it could be dangerous to take on an indigenous perspective but how could I inspire empathy if I did not visit a character? Fortunately I had a mentor who was indigenous and who supported me in this approach. And I had worked alongside Māori for a long time. But it wasn't an easy decision and I did not take it lightly. It was the only way I could avoid invisibilising people who have been invisiblised, it seemed to me. And I have received great support from Māori who tell me that this young woman is their ancestor.
I had four perspectives in my novel. Two main perspectives. Another only briefly but an important passage. And a fourth with a significant tilt.
I was warned that multiple pov's would risk the book seeming like a theatre with characters entering and exiting a stage. But this was avoided I think by your emphasis that one character is showing something that cannot be revealed in any other way, whether it is interior or exterior and particularly interior.
In The Seasonwife my bad guy is stuck in a class system. He really isn't going to change but he doesn't see himself as a villain. I find this a lot with bad guys - real ones and otherwise, they believe themselves. And I needed to show his belief system.
I love the way my characters came out and revealed themselves. I love them for their courage.
I thought 'never again'. Next novel: one pov. Haha! Now I'm working on a trilogy 'No Graves For Ghosts' and the first novel 'The Maid and The Mesmerist' already has several povs. One main character but others who show other aspects of the story, not just her story but the greater story, the one happening then and now.
All history is a thread from the past to the present and to the future. And as a historical novelist I find certain characters - in this case based on their real life stories - tell different aspects pertinent to the thread of then and now and the future.
So thank you. I will continue to play with the different characters and I applaud you George for paving the way with not one path but many. When the path leads somewhere then even into a different life we can go there. I have learned to take the risk and venture away from one main view into others to shine a light on us all.
"So, the opening of a book makes a certain tension. The writer’s job (let’s say) is to know, or feel, the nature of that tension, and try to maintain it..."
I really liked this simple point. It sounds pretty obvious afterward, but that simple abstraction--a certain tension--really highlights how much flexibility you have as a writer to move forward with a given body of writing. It doesn't have to _be_ this or that. But whatever it is has to keep having this effect of working with the tension that's there. Thanks for sharing this insight.
Thanks Mary for compiling the list and I'm looking forward to reading your substack too!
George, your note on 'just enough' backstory couldn't have come at a more pertinent moment for me, so thank you. I'm working on a short story that ballooned for a while veering towards the 10k-and-not-yet-finished mark, but earlier this week I realised it's because I was doing too many backstory detours. A quick (in between making the kids tea) editing sessions saw me prune a solid 3k words that were in the main backstory, and that was only the first half of what I've got. Hoping to go back in with the editorial gardening shears again tomorrow morning to bring this baby back to where she needs to be....
Thank you, George, for mentioning my Substack. All are welcome! We're having fun over there, so please join in.
I remember the first time George mentioned having fun while writing. I'd just completed a short story and I said so in one of these Story Club threads and George replied, "Fun, right?" And I was like...."Um.. I think so?" And ever since then, I've thought about the notion that writing ought to be fun. I'd never thought of it that way before. The idea of writing with abandon and just having fun while doing it--No fear. No voices. No big deal. Just writing. It changed things for me, those two little words: Fun, right? Thank you, George, as ever, for this seemingly simple yet altogether profound advice.
"HAVE FUN." That’s the best advice, sometimes the most difficult!
Hey, George and Story Clubbers, the other day I listed to a podcast called Ten Percent Happier. Bill Hader was the guest, and he chatted about anxiety (a real buzzkill, don’t I know it). Anyway, he dropped George’s name not once, but three times! What a blast to be besties with Bill Hader/ George Saunders. Anyway, if you have anxiety like I do, give it a listen. It’s Episode 706, it’s free, and about an hour.
Seems to me Marvin Gay could of written Lincoln in the Bardo too, as he was always asking what's going on^^
I also jammed seven points of view into a short story recently and it was so wild and fun. And also a couple of monkeys to make it a total of nine.
2024 went by pretty fast.
I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with Mary's new compilation. Your recommendations have been my introduction to the contemporary short story (I was an art major). After I moved and got rid of so many books, I wasn’t going to buy any more, so I am trying out online libraries. Thank you, George, for supplying us with pdfs of the stories we read.
Ever since you first mentioned it, having fun has become my mantra. You made me realize that I have always loved fiddling with sentences and paragraphs, rearranging them, cutting/pasting them, tweaking them... and I’m enjoying it more and more as I get older. I used to drive my PhD students mad fiddling with their sentences, hoping that they would catch the bug. Some of them did. Now, if there were a SC in French I would point them here.
Last but not least, I’d like to add to your plug for Mary G’s substack – not only is it a lot of fun but it also complements SC perfectly. She posts her prompts on Monday. She’s given us three so far: a six-word story, a seven-sentence story and a one-sentence story. Looking forward to tomorrow's. Thank you, Mary.
Wow, what an impressive list, thanks Mary!!!!
So many good ones are on there, like Torrey Peeters and Ben Lerner, Hilary Mantel, and then: so many writers I still have to discover!!!
And a great question, too!
I have two questions:
1.How do you keep your characters straight with so many to juggle? How do you avoid the error if saying someone is blond in page 25 and bald in page 142?
2. How do you research characters with very different backgrounds than you? For imstanc3, I am a white middle class, 77-year-old male with a 50+year background as a print journalist. If I were to write a novel, I would want to include Black, Asian, and possibly other male & female characters with interesting and very different backgrounds from myself. How do I make those people real and not just white males in blackface?
George, thanks for parting the curtain, to some extent, and letting us see part of the process you undertook in writing your novel. As always, it's very helpul. It leads me to a question that I hope will be helpful for many of us.
Hemingway famously said, "The first draft of anything is shit." And other authors have confirmed that, encouraging us to just get the story down, then worry about craft later during the revision process. However, I've also read quite a few authors who say things such as, "I'm happy if I write 500 words a day" or "If I write 8 pages a week, I'm ecstatic." Either they're writing with their eyes closed, or their daily word count represents some mighty refined shit.
Why is it taking them so long to write that first draft if the bar is low and they're supposed to be postponing the revision process?
Thanks!
Thank you, questioner, and thank you, George. Today’s post is thrilling and exciting, especially George’s principle that such notions as a central character’s journey are “a subset of a greater thing - the story responding both to itself and to the reader’s constantly arising expectations.” (And also of needing only “enough backstory to make the current moment make sense.”)
The works of Sigrid Nunez, which I am now engrossed in and enchanted by, illustrate this notion of what a “story” can be. I am deep into reading and rereading The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and The Vulnerables, which are not traditional novels, but blends of memoir and fiction—digressive and essay-istic, spare yet chock-a-block with characters and their moments, anecdotes, philosophical ponderings, jokes, asides, stream-of-consciousness narration, history, current events, questions. Shades of Virginia Woolf and making a “novel” novel indeed. In each of these I have happily let go of expectations and followed the narrator wherever she takes me.
Nunez is a graceful and deliberate writer; she makes wonderful sentences. I recommend this video from her appearance four years ago at Politics and Prose Bookstore, in which she reads from and discusses The Friend: https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=Sigrid+Nunez&type=E211US105G91558#id=4&vid=1858facd62401d0c0dfca8c8bf8757f3&action=click
Fantastic list. Enough to keep me busy forever. Could I mention Raymond Carver. Poems and short stories. He might have been on the list and I buzzed through too fast. Wonderful of you to take the time to put it together. Thank you.
You are, consistently, one of my absolute favorite writing sages in a world full of dollar store “experts” screaming their answers to questions no one asked them.
Office Hours makes me feel a little more sane and hopeful every time, and I thank you for that. 🤍
Ah. This explains why the short fiction I most recommend and read multiple times and will read again was your 'Mother's Day'. The spin on the point of view, from one woman who I utterly comprehended to another who I resisted at first and then also comprehended was intoxicatingly great. The way these perspectives gave me insight into the man - their focus, is something I have returned to so many times. And the children, they were there too, begging for my attention.
I learned something about life on a deeper plane. Two truths. Three even. And more. Your pivot gave me permission to experiment with different fully focused points of view. The tragic, the comedic, the strange dance of life is that no one person is fully right all the time and we are connected in this dance and we can learn from each other.
So I learn way of pivoting and turning. Just when I think I understand another perspective challenges my perspective.
This is a technique I sued with my own novel The Seasonwife released in Aotearoa New Zealand last year which has been well reviewed and which is dancing along happily. I toyed with one pov but it wasn't enough. I knew it could be dangerous to take on an indigenous perspective but how could I inspire empathy if I did not visit a character? Fortunately I had a mentor who was indigenous and who supported me in this approach. And I had worked alongside Māori for a long time. But it wasn't an easy decision and I did not take it lightly. It was the only way I could avoid invisibilising people who have been invisiblised, it seemed to me. And I have received great support from Māori who tell me that this young woman is their ancestor.
I had four perspectives in my novel. Two main perspectives. Another only briefly but an important passage. And a fourth with a significant tilt.
I was warned that multiple pov's would risk the book seeming like a theatre with characters entering and exiting a stage. But this was avoided I think by your emphasis that one character is showing something that cannot be revealed in any other way, whether it is interior or exterior and particularly interior.
In The Seasonwife my bad guy is stuck in a class system. He really isn't going to change but he doesn't see himself as a villain. I find this a lot with bad guys - real ones and otherwise, they believe themselves. And I needed to show his belief system.
I love the way my characters came out and revealed themselves. I love them for their courage.
I thought 'never again'. Next novel: one pov. Haha! Now I'm working on a trilogy 'No Graves For Ghosts' and the first novel 'The Maid and The Mesmerist' already has several povs. One main character but others who show other aspects of the story, not just her story but the greater story, the one happening then and now.
All history is a thread from the past to the present and to the future. And as a historical novelist I find certain characters - in this case based on their real life stories - tell different aspects pertinent to the thread of then and now and the future.
So thank you. I will continue to play with the different characters and I applaud you George for paving the way with not one path but many. When the path leads somewhere then even into a different life we can go there. I have learned to take the risk and venture away from one main view into others to shine a light on us all.
"So, the opening of a book makes a certain tension. The writer’s job (let’s say) is to know, or feel, the nature of that tension, and try to maintain it..."
I really liked this simple point. It sounds pretty obvious afterward, but that simple abstraction--a certain tension--really highlights how much flexibility you have as a writer to move forward with a given body of writing. It doesn't have to _be_ this or that. But whatever it is has to keep having this effect of working with the tension that's there. Thanks for sharing this insight.
Thanks Mary for compiling the list and I'm looking forward to reading your substack too!
George, your note on 'just enough' backstory couldn't have come at a more pertinent moment for me, so thank you. I'm working on a short story that ballooned for a while veering towards the 10k-and-not-yet-finished mark, but earlier this week I realised it's because I was doing too many backstory detours. A quick (in between making the kids tea) editing sessions saw me prune a solid 3k words that were in the main backstory, and that was only the first half of what I've got. Hoping to go back in with the editorial gardening shears again tomorrow morning to bring this baby back to where she needs to be....
First one to read all the works on the New Book List for Story Club gets a free t-shirt? :)