Avi

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The key to writing

Stick figureIt may come as a shock to those of you who have expressed admi­ra­tion for my books and writ­ing (thank you!) when I con­fess that I do not believe I am a good writer. Immersed as I cur­rent­ly am in putting togeth­er a first draft of a new book, I am often dis­heart­ened by how bad­ly it is going. If I were a painter, or illus­tra­tor, I might say I was cre­at­ing noth­ing but stick fig­ures. Rather unin­ter­est­ing ones at that.

Right next to my com­put­er desk are three long shelves of books that I have written—first edi­tions, hard­back, paper­back, for­eign editions—some with awards—and I will gaze at them and won­der, “How did I do that?”

The answer is, while I tru­ly don’t write well—I do rewrite well. That is the way my books come to life, in my head and on the page. And, as I have expressed here many times before, I rewrite end­less­ly. That is when my stick fig­ures take on heft, and voice, and hope­ful­ly, life.

One of the key aspects of that rewrit­ing, is try­ing to estab­lish flow, rhythm, drive—call it what you will—a sense of ener­gy that moves the sto­ry along with seem­ing­ly truth­ful sim­plic­i­ty, a sense of rev­e­la­tion, rather than con­struc­tion. I say truth­ful in the con­text of an old gag: “The most impor­tant thing about writ­ing is hon­esty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

That notion can apply to many an art form—indeed, I heard it first in my the­atre days—but there is some aes­thet­ic truth to it, cyn­i­cal though it may sound. I could bet­ter express it in words I once heard Paula Fox say, “The writer’s job is to imag­ine the truth.”

But enough of this. I need to get back to that first draft.

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