Where, especially, to start.

November 30, 2008

I can’t get enough of the book blog, Paper Cuts, from The New York Times (this is my 2nd posting about it in a week). I click on it several times a week, anticipating the next feature/story/podcast/interview. The Nov. 28 edition’s Stray Questions featured Elizabeth Graver, author of the short story collection Have You Seen Me? (which I just ordered!), and the recent novel, Awake.

What I love–yet again– is her response to the question,

What are you working on?

Her response:

I’m starting the final section of my novel in progress. The book is set in a summer community on Buzzards Bay in 1942, 1959, 1970 and — well, I’m not sure. Maybe 1999. Maybe 2000. Not 2001. I’ve written several possible beginnings for this last section (which I’m currently calling “Bone”) but haven’t committed to one yet. Do I begin with a Lobster Release Party, where the summer residents buy lobsters at the fish store and set them free in a variation on the Buddhist ceremony of releasing animals destined for slaughter? Or earlier in the summer, with one character, just barely pregnant, swimming in a cold sea in early May? Or later — at the end, really — with an accident on Labor Day? Or microscopically close up, inside, say, a plant? I know more or less what the story is, but not how to tell it — where to bear down, expand or contract, handle time. Where, especially, to start. I love this messing-around phase. Right now I have eight or so different documents on my computer: Bone1, Bone2, Bone3, etc. Eventually I’ll have to choose.

Unlike Tom Bissel’s response (from two posts ago), which emphasizes his prolificacy, Graver’s response is funny, zany, and SO relatable. This is how writers work.

Do I begin this way…? Or that? 

Where, especially, to start.

And I love that she has eight or so different documents on her computer: Bone 1, Bone 2, Bone 3…

Reading this, I felt a kinship– this is what I go through! Writing can be such a hermetic experience, it’s always cool to hear about about the process of other writers–especially established brilliant writers like Graver.

You can read her fabulous story, Three Mothers, here.