Ian McEwan - You Know Him, Right? - Interview - New Novel, Revisions

 Thank you taxpayers of America for giving me the chance to get around to reading Ian McEwan. I had seen some reviews and watched bits of Atonement. While at Fort Dix FCI, I read The Cement Garden, Amsterdam, and Atonement. Of the three, the first was the real mind-blower. It makes me wonder if what I write really goes to the core of things.

Anyway, there is now The WD Interview: Ian McEwan. He discusses his new novel at length, but also touches on a subject I have been posting on lately: revision.

Has your approach to revision changed over the course of your career or with each book?

My first drafts are fairly close because I proceed reasonably carefully, but thousands of small changes, sometimes one or two larger changes happen. I guess my second draft here, certain chapters got reversed. I mean their positions I changed. I went on making small changes—and there probably were 5,000 changes—but if someone had read it a month ago [and] was reading it again, they’d probably not notice a thing.

In the last several weeks, certain factual things have been pointed out. It’s very useful having translators around the world. They all have different specialties. I very carelessly said at one point that 51 was a prime number. I didn’t even bother to think about it for a second. And then, one of the translators, they said, “No, it’s not. It’s divisible by 17.” I should have known that. Things like that. But that pleases me because I feel like—well rather like Briony in Atonement when she’s grown up and she’s a novelist. These little corrections, it’s as if you are a kind of forensic crime scene scientist on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass looking for evidence on blades of grass.

If you’re writing a realist novel, you really want to get things right.

What I have read about McEwan and the radio interviews I have heard, I thought I liked this guy, but this, which is part of a longer response, confirms what I found likeable. 

So, I’m always encouraging, when people ask me my advice about these things, I say, write a novella, write a short story. Be wild and free and be able to accept failure by your own terms before you commit to spending three or four or five years on something that might fail.

You may also want to take a look at The Guardian's Ian McEwan: ‘The perfect novella is always just out of my reach’. It is another interview.

sch 12/31/22