Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver, is available now from Harper, so we asked her a few questions about her writing life. What time of day do you write (and why)? Once I’m seriously into a writing project, I tend to wake up before dawn with words flooding into my brain.
I let them pool in there until it feels like they might leak out, then I run to my desk to start pouring them into the keyboard. I only break to go to the kitchen and refill my coffee cup, no other distractions until lunchtime. If things are going well, I’ll forget lunch and keep going until early evening.
The flow state is so blissful, I forget that I have a body. Very often, my darling husband Steven will quietly deliver a sandwich to my desk. Otherwise I would surely have perished by now.
How do you tackle writer’s block? When I’m trying to get a new book started, every single time, I somehow convince myself it’s the stupidest thing anybody has ever written. The only way out is to give myself permission to write a terrible first draft.
After all, nobody’s going to see it. It won’t leave my office until it has been rewritten a dozen or fifty times, slowly progressing from stupid to decent to the book I want it to be. What’s the best or worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
Francine Prose gave me this, a very long time ago: “The first sentence (or paragraph) of a novel should make a promise that the rest of the book will keep.” It’s brilliant. It forces you, the writer, to get very clear with yourself about your intentions, right from the start. You will not be wasting the reader’s time.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
