Writing: Advice From Louise Erdrich

The Paris Review lifted its paywall on Louise Erdrich, The Art of Fiction No. 208. Where she was interviewed by Lisa Halliday.

INTERVIEWER

A journalist once asked you what advice you would give someone trying to write a novel. You said, “Don’t take the project too seriously.” Is that what you would say today?

ERDRICH

I think I meant that grand ideas kill first efforts. Begin with something in your range. Then write it as a secret. I’d be paralyzed if I thought I had to write a great novel, and no matter how good I think a book is on one day, I know now that a time will come when I will look upon it as a failure. The gratification has to come from the effort itself. I try not to look back. I approach the work as though, in truth, I’m nothing and the words are everything. Then I write to save my life. If you are a writer, that will be true. Writing has saved my life.

INTERVIEWER

How?

ERDRICH

I needed a way to go at life. I needed meaning. I might have chosen something more self-destructive had I not found writing.

 I may be an example of having had too grand an idea; that may have contributed to my stopping my writing about 40 years ago.

I know I am an example of how writing can counter self-destructiveness. Would I had learned that lesson earlier than I did.

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12/29/21