Methods To The Madness
The WSJ Online asks eleven (why eleven?) novelists a question I’d never ask: how do you write?
The answers will not tell you, as the headline states, “how to write a great novel.” The answers are endearingly mundane: font size, preferred brand of pen, location, time of day, background music.
The novelists? Nicholson Baker, Orhan Pamuk, Hilary Mantel, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Richard Powers, Dan Chaon, Kate Christensen, Margaret Atwood, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Amitav Ghosh, Russell Banks, Colum McCann, Anne Rice, John Wray, and Laura Lippman.
They mention “obsess,” in various -ive and -ion forms, twelve times.
Not that I’m obsessive.
