The Nighttime Novelist is a writing book that stands out from other books on the craft. In this interview Joseph Bates shares his system to help even the most time strapped people write a novel in their spare time.
There are so many books about writing on the market today. What is something that makes your writing book unique, different from all the others out there?
Certainly the presentation, how one interacts with the book. Writers with day jobs have precious little time in which to work, and the last thing I wanted was give them a guide that would end up devouring that time . . . in other words, that they'd have an hour to write and would spend it reading The Nighttime Novelist. So the book is organized into quick mini-chapters, allowing the reader to find precisely the information, or the inspiration, she's looking for to get the writing moving again.
The mini-chapters are broken into Techniques, or the fundamentals of novel-writing such as plot, structure, character, conflict, and motivation; Hurdles, which consider those common problems novelists encounter (or make for themselves) in crafting a unified, forward-moving story; and then Going Deeper sections, which cover the finer points of storytelling and the process . . . what turns a simple story idea into an experience that resonates with - - moves, infuriates, thrills, inspires – a reader.
The book can be read straight through, of course – I begin at the very beginning, with searching out and developing initial ideas, and then follow the process right up through revision – but the presentation of material makes The Nighttime Novelist a book you can pick up as needed, that you can keep going back to for substantive advice or just a push in the right direction.
Reading through "The Nighttime Novelist", I found myself repeatedly compelled to break away from the book and try out your techniques at my keyboard. What's your secret for inspiring writers and students in this way?
Many thanks! The clacking of keys is the highest compliment the book can receive.
If there is a secret, it probably has to do with my mistrust of writing instruction that offers no real room for participation, inspiration, co-creation . . . the kind that tells you, for example, "You're a bird in a nest! Write ten pages!" (My reaction to such bossing is usually, First, I'm not a bird in a tree, and second, why are you yelling at me?) I think the best writing instruction, and the best writing exercise, is the kind that doesn't simply tell the writer what to do but reveals possibility for her, allows the writer to engage inspiration as much as her intellect.
There's a prompt in the book (on dialogue) where I offer the following first line:
- My boss calls me into his office to tell me he's quitting. On his face is a look of ________.
I provide ten ways to fill in the blank, including "despair," "relief," "accusation," and "unchecked lust," and I ask the writer to choose and then convey the dynamic she's created through conversation.This allows the writer to find that particular combination that catches her attention, fires up the imagination . . . and thus she does the exercise not because I've told her to but because she's curious to know what a look of accusation or unchecked lust would mean in the moment, how the scene would play out, what might happen next. This is the curiosity that drives us to write in the first place . . . and if I can help evoke that curiosity through instruction, then the instruction becomes useful in a practical, and not just an intellectual, sense.
With all the demands of teaching, how and when do you find time to write?
It can be hard to find the time, absolutely. But the more responsibility you take on in teaching, or whatever field you're in, the more important it becomes to protect your writing time, and to do so without guilt...usually by learning how to pronounce, and effectively use, the word No. (For such a little word, it can be a tough one to say.)
I carve out time – weekends, evenings depending on what's going on – that I devote to my own work, even though it's a small percentage of the workweek. But the truth is I write every day, whether or not I'm sitting in front of the computer. I'm always trying to work around some problem, consider some new possibility, find some right way of expressing a thing that's been bothering me . . . so that, when I do get those precious hours to write, they're not spent wondering what I should be working on, or how to proceed. They're spent catching up with the story in my head, and seeing if it holds up once it's on the page.
And there's the summer, of course. Ahh, the summer.
In "The Nighttime Novelist" you show a sense of humor. How has that quality helped you in your fiction writing?
The fiction I most admire is the kind that uses the comic to explore more serious subjects. There was recently a New York Times profile of Padgett Powell in which he recalled taking a fiction workshop with Donald Barthelme, who advised his class what humor – or "wacky mode," as he put it – must do in fiction: "Break their hearts." It's true that humor can be used cheaply, but it can also be used in subversive, sophisticated, even heartfelt and sentimental ways. I've no idea if my fiction manages any of that, but Barthelme and Powell – and also Joseph Heller, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, Percival Everett – have broken my heart many times over with their humor. For which I'm thankful.
Read the rest of this interview to learn what hurdles the author has overcome, mistakes writers make in plotting, and his new novel, The Strikeout Artist.
Next part of the interview with Joseph Bates, author of The Nighttime Novelist
Suzanne Pitner - Suzanne Pitner is a teacher and published writer. A member of RWA and YARWA, she writes fiction as Suzanne Lilly.
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