JC and Me on Oates & Revising & Writing

 JC kept me writing after I got to Fort Dix. We have since reconnected. We are both in the process of getting our writing digitized, but he is luckily not in a halfway house. The following is a discussion we had through email on the mechanics of writing and the creative process.. JC has the different colored background.

I think overall that Joyce is right. It's hard to argue with someone so successful. In truth, I'm trying to remember something of hers that I've read. Probably a few short stories at some time. At any rate while I agree that the expression of a character may involve creating a unique voice for that character, in the grand scheme of things, I think that an author develops their own unique, what we should maybe call style, for presentation of each work individually and for their entire oeuvre. To me this style involves pacing, use of language, implicit and explicit themes, originality, and the like.

   What has been taking me so long in digitizing my writing is how much editing/rewriting I'm doing. Entering my story GEL is not just a matter of transcription, it's a matter of tightening and in many cases adding or subtracting from what I originally wrote (Aug 2001 to May 2002). Also not sure why Joyce says you can't write the first line of a story until the last line has been written. I understand that a story evolves as you write it, but unless your wrap completely subverts your beginning... Not sure I get it.

On Thu, Jul 1, 2021 at 3:56 PM Sam Hasler wrote:

Yes, I know have a fixation but damn it she makes sense:

All of these processes are constantly undergoing change, of course. “The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence has been written.” Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite. Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I’ve reached the ending. We have not discussed genres, but each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of “form” to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

I should stress that, for me, voice is predominant. I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express. To choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration. If Shakespeare’s great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective; each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation. Shakespeare would seem to have been a person for whom the human voice/personality in all its splendid idiosyncrasy was absolutely enthralling.

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On Fri, Jul 2, 2021 at 12:58 PM Sam Hasler wrote:

For someone so prolific and so intellectual (she taught at Princeton!), I think she is very much down to earth. After you left, the leisure library had a memoir she put together (parts had been published at different times) and she really comes from a very plain background. I also got interlibrary loan to send in her Faith of a Writer - nothing high falutin' about her. But then there was not really that quality in Kundera was there?

That page you read had changes made between what I had written down and then changes made by suggestion from Kevin. I rejected one of his suggestions and one was how I would normally have structured the paragraphs - break out the dialog instead of keeping it in the narrative. If I had not been going so fast - all I do in here that is not job hunting I probably do too fast - I would have made that change myself. All the blog posts were supposed to be put as first drafts and I cannot do it except what I am doing now which is very much on the fly. The journals from prison I cannot help but revise. In the past, I never revised what I wrote as fiction. Didn't learn to really do that until I started writing appellate briefs. Guess my legal education did me some good.

I did that first line thing before I ever read her suggestion to do that. I know I did it with 'One Dead Blonde" and I thought I did it before that. Thing was by the time I had finished the last draft of "Blonde" I had overhauled the whole thing and I did not like the start of it. If I were better organized, it would make less sense.

The process of creation is slow, subject to doubt, and to some extent derivative. it can start with a flash of brilliance, but then has to be lassoed into some kind of viable shape.  I've never written anything that I didn't edit when revisited - even years later, in spite of advice to the contrary. I never put my babies to bed, always brushing 'em up