An Evening with Dani Shapiro

Conversations from the Archive
October 2013
Pen on Fire Speaker Series with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Corona Del Mar, California

Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro

Excerpts:

Dani Shapiro: [The book is about] everything I know about how to live.

At the urging of my publisher, I began a blog about five years ago. I had no intention of writing a book about writing. I wrote in the blog about once a week and started receiving messages from other writers: “This is what I needed today. When is the book coming out?”

It wasn’t a book I had to write; it was a book I was asked to write. [It] answers the question, “What does it mean to live a creative life?” At some point, the rules are made to be broken. Break them with impunity.

[Taking a break is actually part of the writing process. Like Joan Didion said,] the shimmer or something coming to life is not quantifiable and can’t be searched for, but you have to be ready for it when it comes.

If you love a sentence enough to get up from your chair, walk into the other room, and share it with your husband, it’s probably a sentence you need to cut.

Write for an audience of one. You should write for an idealized—or perfect—reader. For Kurt Vonnegut, that reader was his dead sister.

I can’t think of anything worse than, “Who’s your demographic?” The worst idea ever is to market the book before you write it.

Writing is joy deferred. It doesn’t feel great when it’s happening. [There is so much in Still Writing about] distraction and resistance. When walking from my cappuccino maker in the kitchen to the desk [upstairs], so many things can go wrong. In the midst of [about] seventy-five steps, I can find any number of things to do to avoid writing, like cleaning. [However,] the biggest enemy lurks at the desk: the internet.

[When on the internet,] you can look like you’re [writing], when you’re really buying shoes. I was on Twitter reading the #amwriting posts, thinking, “No, you’re not.”

I wrote an essay in which I tracked my own mind in relation to the internet. It was eye-opening because I thought I was doing something useful.

In my twenties, when I got stuck while writing my first novel, I took cigarette breaks. It was not great for my health, but it was great for my novel. The internet is not a cigarette break.

Confidence is an overrated trait, destructive. It can be confused with courage. Confidence can make you think you don’t have to struggle to get it right.

We are all solitary. We secretly think we’re doing it wrong. Other people know what they’re doing. [This] is just not true.

[Middles of stories are] one damn thing after another. Things just keep happening. Tobias Wolff recently told me for every one-hundred-and-twenty pages he writes, he ends up with about twenty pages of text. That’s just what it takes.

Audience Member: You’re a polish-as-you-go type. I am the same way. I always thought I was doing it wrong.

Shapiro: It’s so individual. Find your way. Hone that way. Protect that way.

[Someone once gave me this advice:] “You can write a really beautiful sentence. Just make sure it means something.”

I like writing by hand. On a computer, it always looks neat and tidy. [When writing by hand,] it looks really messy because it should. It’s wonderful to see the mind making mistakes. For someone who is a polisher like I am, write by hand.

When rereading your work too much, it assumes an air of inevitability. It’s hard to change a sentence when it has always been like that.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett: Those are your darlings.

Shapiro: [My first novel was an attempt to write about my parents’ car accident] when I wasn’t ready. I needed to tell that story. Ten years later, I needed to write it as a memoir because it haunted me.

[With memoirs, the interesting aspect] is the storytelling itself.

DeMarco-Barrett: Slow Motion reads like a novel.

Shapiro: I had to create narrative velocity and momentum. [It] was my attempt to shape chaos, sorrow into art.

I don’t believe [writing] gets easier. I think it gets harder for everybody. The moment you buy into your whatever, you’re sunk.

Audience Member: [What about] writing a memoir as a novel so as not to hurt your real-life characters? How do you make that decision?

Shapiro: It’s not a decision. [It’s about] getting past the fear of telling the story. If you write a novel because you’re afraid to write a memoir, it’s not going to be a very good novel. If you’re writing to protect someone, it’s not going to be very good.

You have to know what you’re writing when you write it. A book wants to be what it wants to be. We don’t choose stories. Stories choose us. If we don’t tell them, we are somehow diminished. The writer is a servant of a book being what it wants to be.

After my mother died, it actually got harder to write about her, not the other way around, because I had the responsibility of the last word. It’s a tremendous responsibility.

If you have a quality of revenge, you’re not ready to write it. Revenge never creates a good book. Take out cheap shots. Always do a reading for cheap shots.

It’s not going to get into the world without your permission. Censoring your writing while writing is self-defeating.