n an excerpted interview published in The News & Observer in 1994, Betts talked about her book and explained that it was an exploration of how God can allow the innocent to suffer.
“I always am interested in whether or not you can deal with what I think of as the big questions at the level of ordinary working people. It seems to me that that’s essential in fiction in America,” she said. “If you really want to ask the questions that Job asked, why shouldn’t you ask them of a highway patrolman, a beautician, a shoe salesman at Belk’s …?”
Annie-Proulx/Paris-Review/Intv
“There is difficulty involved in going from the basic sentence that’s headed in the right direction to making a fine sentence. But it’s a joyous task. It’s hard, but it’s joyous. Being raised rural, I think work is its own satisfaction. It’s not seen as onerous, or a dreadful fate. It’s like building a mill or a bridge or sewing a fine garment or chopping wood—there’s a pleasure in constructing something that really works.”
Annie-Proulx/Paris-Review/Intv
We think in generalities, but we...
“We think in generalities, but we live in detail.”
— Alfred North Whitehead, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_North_WhiteheadWe think in generalities, but we...
Find Your True Subject
Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write.
JOYCE CAROL OATES
Find Your True Subject
There’d Better Be Trouble Brewing Somewhere
Whether a story is told on the page or on the screen, the same elements are required. You’ve got to have characters you can identify with, and there’d better be trouble brewing somewhere. Whatever these people’s lives have been before, they’re about to change in a big way. That’s what stories are all about.
JENNY WINGFIELD
There’d Better Be Trouble Brewing Somewhere
In the overworld, the elements are: Talk to people, wander around, try new things, listen, and *gradually* gain focus on what to do next.
Sometimes you have to stop worrying, wondering, and doubting. Have faith that things will work out, maybe not how you planned, but just how it’s meant to be.
The hardest part about growing is letting go of what you were used to, and moving on with something you're not.
You don’t really need to worry about concentrating per se. As long as you put in the time, you can be as mentally distracted as you *want.* The concentration will eventually just “kick in” after a few days of doing it. I am very distractible by nature, so I know what I am talking about.
Of course, there are ways of removing distractions, like turning off your phone or email while you are working. You can deliberately avoid multi-tasking if that is helpful. What I am saying is that you don’t have to worry about the concentration per se. Regularity of working habits is the main remedy, not some internal concentration mojo that must be cultivated on its own terms. In this way concentration is similar to inspiration: neither has to exist before the work happens.
The most useful advice on writing I’ve ever received comes from Gil Rogin, who told me that he always uses his best thing in his lead, and his second best thing in his last paragraph; and from Dwight Macdonald, who wrote that the best advice he ever received was to put everything on the same subject in the same place. To these dictums I would add the advice to ask yourself repeatedly: what is this about?
THOMAS POWERS