Editing DFW

The New Yorker's Deborah Treisman on editing David Foster Wallace:

"David was wonderful to edit because he was so involved with the minutiae of his work—he had a long explanation for every decision that he'd made, and yet, at the same time, he was willing to rethink anything that didn't seem to be landing well for the reader. Editing him was sometimes a more painstaking process than editing most writers, but it was a genuine pleasure to engage with his intelligence and with his way of thinking about language, from how it supported narrative trajectory and character development all the way down to the punctuation. He was truly interested in the fine points of grammar, and every rule he broke he broke deliberately, with a specific artistic purpose in mind. Those long paragraphs—as off-putting as they can seem—were entirely purposeful."

More here.

The New Yorker also recently published another DFW story ("All That"), which is an excerpt from The Pale King. Which reminds me: I'm way, way behind on my reading.

That OCD Way

One Story always publishes an author interview to accompany its current issue. This is a nice thing to do. (SmokeLong Quarterly does it too.)

The latest issue features a story by Tamas Dobozy. I've never heard of Tamas Dobozy, and I haven't read his One Story story "The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kálmán Once Lived," but I enjoyed his interview, especially his answer to the question "What was the most challenging aspect of writing this story?":

"Probably doing the edits. I’m not someone who’s particularly interested in reworking a piece. Most of the time I just wish the editors would do it for me, take over, do what they want to the material (provided it’s not cheesy or misleading or clunky or anything), and publish it. As time goes by, my interest in writing is really confined to the initial discovery of the work, and after that I’m not really interested in it anymore. I used to be one of those writers who worried over every comma and article during the editing process, in that OCD way typical of beginning writers, thinking that it would somehow invalidate my sole authorship of the story, but I don’t really care about that anymore. Now I just think, 'Oh, do I really need to do all this work? If you want the story a different way, why don’t you just do it?' I really love the process of writing, and of course I like to see work published in a narcissistic way, if only to prove that the hours I spend typing do extend to someone other than myself, but more and more the only part of it that holds any meaning for me is the process of filling up the blank pages. Most editors I’ve run into are good enough at sorting out a story, though I’ve only once worked with an editor who I thought was a real genius at it."

I can see how this evolution -- from being manic about revising to not caring and essentially handing off a story -- can happen, but I don't think that's a path in my future. I'm too OCD when it comes to writing and revising. I'm like Dobozy used to be: stressing over commas and such. This kind of tinkering, though, can really bog you down. If you get too manic and obsessive, you won't ever let a story go and move on -- and this is a concern of mine.

Dobozy's answer to the question "What is the best advice about writing you have ever gotten?" is also worth checking out. (It has to do with rejection.)

Parenthood and Writing

Last month (or was it two or three months ago?) The Elegant Variation ran an interview with Victoria Patterson, author of the recently released novel Drift. (One of her professors jokingly called her "The Edith Wharton of the O.C.")

Anyway, in the interview she talked about her time in grad school and what it's like to be a parent and a writer.

Here's the quote that struck me and that I've been meaning to post for weeks:

"The most challenging thing was balancing my home life. My eldest son (seven at the time) experienced difficulties at school, meaning he wanted to quit school entirely. I remember he said, 'I wish you were a waitress again. I liked that better.' And I explained that when I was a waitress, I had been away from home more hours, because of my work schedule. But I knew my son was right, that even when I was home, I wasn’t home. I was constantly writing in my head. I even dreamed sentences. I remember sitting in on my son's first grade class, trying to assess what was going on with him in the classroom. I had a story due for workshop, so I was sitting in one of those little plastic chairs, hunched over, working on my computer, writing."

...even when I was home, I wasn't home. I was constantly writing in my head.

This is what really hit me. Because this is me. Because this is what I constantly worry about. The phrase I use is "perpetually distracted." That's how I feel sometimes -- distracted and distant -- and I think my wife would agree.

If I'm not writing/revising in my head or thinking about writing, I'm thinking about the fact that I'm not writing. Or I'm thinking where I should submit a story. Or which story I should work on next. But if I'm working on a story that means I'm not working on the novel. But maybe I should be working on that memoir I started. And on and on.

Writing is the last thing I think about when I go to bed. And it's often the first thing I think about when I wake up. If I don't write for a long period of time, I get cranky. I start to feel that I'm lost, adrift; that I won't be able to get back to where I was.

The fear I have, then, is that I'm not fully present for my family. They're not getting all of me. And I'm not fully allowing myself to be in the moment with them. On one level, I am always elsewhere. In writing la-la land. Perpetually distracted. Thinking of characters. Thinking of sentences. And it's not fair to my children. And it's not fair to my wife. I have no resolution here. I wish I did. All I know is that I need to find a better way to balance my life as a writer and as a parent/husband.

---

You can read the rest of the Victoria Patterson interview here.

And a while back, Pank posted some great essays about motherhood/fatherhood and writing. The motherhood essays feature Ethel Rohan, Angi Becker Stevens and Teresa Houle. The fatherhood essays feature David Erlewine and Ryan Bradley.

The Heart of Saturday Night

DFW Grammar Challenge

This could really make your head spin (courtesy of HTML Giant).

What I Really Want for Christmas

Cormac McCarthy is auctioning off his typewriter. Proceeds will benefit the Santa Fe Institute.

A quote from the authentication letter that he wrote:

“It has never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a service station hose. ... I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of 50 years.”

Wow.

The Dan Chaon Post

Dan Chaon seems like a wise man.

I first became aware of his writing when I reviewed his superb collection Among the Missing for the San Francisco Chronicle.

And he's been on my mind lately because I really want to read his new novel Await Your Reply.

There's also been some heavy linkage to this essay, which takes aspiring writers to task -- and rightfully so -- for not reading and supporting literary magazines.

Here's the quote that's getting quoted a lot:

"The writing community is full of lame-o people who want to be published in journals even though they don’t read the magazines that they want to be published in. These people deserve the rejections that they will undoubtedly receive, and no one should feel sorry for them when they cry about how they can’t get anyone to accept their stories."

Toward the end he mentions Hobart and Avery as two great magazines that writers should read and know about. I couldn't agree more. (The new issue of Avery, by the way, should be out soon.)

Moreover, Chaon was recently interviewed by One Story. But it wasn't for one of his stories; it was for a story by his late wife Sheila Schwartz, whose story "Finding Peace" is the current issue of One Story. If nothing else, read the last few paragraphs. Break your heart.

And one more thing: this amazing tribute to his wife, published a while back at The Rumpus. Talk about break your heart.