Thread: Jennifer Egan on Writing

Jennifer Egan shares her thoughts on writing. Jennifer's most recent book, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the 2011 LA Times Book Prize for fiction, and was a finalist for the Pen Faulkner Award.

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Did you have a vision of what it meant to be a writer?

No. I hoped it would mean publishing books one day. But that almost seemed like an impossible hope because I felt like the steps between me and that goal seemed so many.

Why?

I think I knew that I wasn’t really that good. I knew that when I read books, I couldn’t actually imagine how people could write them. I was not one of those people who thought, “I can do better than that.” That’s probably one of the ways that you can divide people. Are they motivated by the thought that they can do better, or are they motivated by the thought that there is so much quality out there and, “How can I ever do it?” For some reason, that motivates me. I respond well to adversity. [Laughs.]

...I had this manuscript. I had figured that it was just going to be a matter of a couple of months of temping before I was raised aloft! [Laughs.] You know, published with great honors! Of course, it was nothing like that. I sent it to agents and it would immediately come back to me— it was like a boomerang. And then I would send it to friends, and they really did not know what to say to me.

Because they didn’t want to offend you?

Yeah! People would sort of drop out of sight after they’d received it. Technology comes into it again— that sort of couldn’t happen now, there’s no way to drop out of sight. But then, I just sort of couldn’t reach people. I never seemed to be home when they would call, and they were never home when I called. And that includes my mother! [Laughs.]

The truth was evident within three weeks: It was totally untenable. Then I just felt so ashamed. I had spent all this time on this book. What I started to understand, though I didn’t look at the book again for another year or so, was that not only was it unsuccessful, it was sort of unreadable! Sentence by sentence, I had really lost my way.

Why do you think that was?

I think because I was in a vacuum. All I had was the routine of putting words on a page, but what I had lost track of was what makes something interesting to read. And since I wasn’t getting any feedback, I had no occasion to realize that I was failing to meet that very basic standard. There were plenty of dramatic possibilities in the story that I had thought of, but I had availed myself of none of that.

Writing is cheap to do. Anyone can say that they’re a writer and fill up pages with words and it looks terrific— you see a nice chunky manuscript and you think, “Hey! Who knows what’s in there?” And then you read it and you think, “Oh my God! How can this person think that he or she is a writer?!” Well, I understand exactly how. In their inner world, it is terrific. But they are not liaising with an outside perspective on whether or not it’s alive.

How did you turn this dark cycle around?

...I started taking a class right away. The first thing I did when I realized the book was really bad was that I thought, “I know I used to be able to write in a way that was at least readable, so I need help.” I actually applied to the MFA program at Columbia, and they turned me down!

I realized that people were teaching out of their houses. One of those people was Philip Schultz, who now runs The Writers’ Studio. He was just teaching out of his living room.

What was the experience in the class like?

My work was really poorly received at first because I had all of these really weirdly bad habits. I was writing badly. It just wasn’t alive. It was dead on arrival. The way Phil ran his class was this: There were fourteen or fifteen people and anyone who wanted to read could read. But, he would stop them when he felt that the room had heard enough. The first story I read, I got maybe two pages in. But I would keep bringing in work.

...The other thing is that I started sending work out, right away. And that, I think, was actually really good for me. I would multiple submit. Of course, this was pre-Internet, so this was all snail mail. I would send to eight or nine places at once. I kept very careful logs of where I had sent things. And as soon as something came back, I would immediately send it back out, the same day. So I would sort of convert disappointment into hope, right away. And then I would feel very hopeful about the stuff that I had sent out.

There was always something in the ether.

There was always stuff out there. I entered contests, everything. Little things started to happen. I would be a quarter finalist in some small thing. I’d get those little handwritten notes saying, “I really enjoyed this…” I lived for that stuff.

It became a kind of secret life.

And then an amazing thing happened. I brought a story into Phil’s class and he let me read all the way to the end.

Ah!

I cried. I cried before I could even go on, because I couldn’t even believe that he was letting me go on. It was very moving. Really, it was just incredible.

A feeling that, “Okay, I’ve reached somewhere new.”

Yes. And then that story I sold to the North American Review. It was the first story I sold. I remember getting that letter and thinking, “Oh my GOD!!! I can’t believe I actually sold a story!!”

Do you have any advice for young writers?

My advice is so basic. Number one: Read. I feel like it’s amazing how many people I know who want to be writers who don’t really read. I’m not convinced someone wants to be a writer if they don’t read. I don’t think the problem is that they need to read more; I think they might need to readjust their life goals. Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work. To be reading good things. I feel that you should be reading what you want to write. Nothing less.

The second thing is, I feel like getting in the habit of it is huge. I guess that was my one accomplishment of those two years [with the first failed novel]— making it a routine is a gigantic part of it.

One corollary of that— and this is probably the most important thing for me— is being willing to write really badly. It won’t hurt you to do that. I think there is this fear of writing badly, something primal about it, like: “This bad stuff is coming out of me…” Forget it! Let it float away and the good stuff follows. For me, the bad beginning is just something to build on. It’s no big deal. You have to give yourself permission to do that because you can’t expect to write regularly and always write well. That’s when people get into the habit of waiting for the good moments, and that is where I think writer’s block comes from. Like: It’s not happening. Well, maybe good writing isn’t happening, but let some bad writing happen. Let it happen!

I mean, when I was writing The Keep, my writing was so terrible. It was God-awful. My working title for that first draft was, A Short Bad Novel. I thought: “How can I disappoint?”

So, just write and be happy that you did it. You stuck to the routine. You’re kind of holding the place so that you’re present for when something good is ready to come.

And then it’s all about rewriting. Re-visiting, re-visiting and re-writing. I think it’s a mistake to be too precious about one’s words. I feel the same way about the criticism. You’re not going to break! It’s pretty tough to stick it out, to do this. So, get used to it! People are going to not like it. Okay! You’ll live. So, it’s bad. Okay. You’ll live! They said ‘no.’ You know what? Everyone gets said ‘no’ to a thousand times. If that is really something that you can’t tolerate, this may not work.

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Full Interview: Jennifer Egan « Writers « The Days of Yore