A couple of years ago I wrote to
my favourite author, Frederick Barthelme, asking him about his practice
of dictating first drafts of his work, his editing process, and how he writes
humour. Here is his response:
I started the dictation as a way to loosen up, and
in the first of the dictated books, Two Against One,
there was very little re-writing. Since then there has been more
re-writing, and the dictation has been a method of generating material.
Plus, it's a great tool for 'naturalizing' the dialogue, which I suppose
is a trick, but it's a trick that works, so it's OK.
Much good writing is good editing -- cutting a word or two, substituting
a phrase for another, swapping two lines of dialogue. So, I do that. I learned
from my brother Don first, and then, perhaps more brilliantly, from my
New Yorker editor Veronica Geng. She was brilliant, I wasn't. You want
to compress the prose enough so it springs off the page; too much and it
remains the unrisen biscuit. So the dialogue is a mating of the two -- dictation
for the sound, editing and compression for the economy.
I never know the characters ahead of time. What would I do when writing
if I did? The writing is creating the characters, reflecting on them, going
back and changing stuff in the early going so that it seeds what developed
later.
We are all modern writers, all afflicted with too much seriousness aggravated
by too little talent. I place a premium on 'charm', and also 'grace', both
of which are mysteries in short supply these days, and install them wherever
possible in my work. I keep wanting to write a really grim book. Doesn't
happen. Maybe I'm a real life music man, maybe I believe too much. Even the
horrible things we do seem wonderful to me, somehow. That explains the ready
employ of Jen's horror stories -- I have some sense of the terrifying grief
of these grisly murders, beheadings, tortures, and yet their presence reminds
me of what it is to be human, of the range of humanness. So in a peculiar
way, every unspeakable act is a reassurance.
If you're interested in more advice, take another look at
The 39 Steps
, which is from the Mississippi
Review
, which Barthelme edits. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
