Tag: george saunders

Do The Work To Find Out

“One question a teacher of writing is often asked, in one form or another is: “Do I have it?” Or, you know, “Do I have it?” That is: “If I keep working at this, will it, in the end, be worth it? Am I a real writer? Will I be able to publish? Can you guarantee, based on what you’ve seen of my writing (of me, my life, my disposition), that this will all work out?””

Speaking from the heart: I have never been able to tell, at all.  Honestly.  Even among our very gifted students at Syracuse, I would never hazard a guess.  There are too many variables and too many unknowns.

… for her, the writer, the game is not: “First, satisfy myself that, if I do the work and put in the time, all will be well, and then, well-pleased, go ahead and do the work” but, rather: “Do the work in order to find out.””

George Saunders, Story Club, Issue ‘Joy, not Fear’

If you haven’t already I’d recommend subscribing to George Saunders’ Story Club newsletter. He’s a superb writing teacher.

11th February 2022 Add Comment

How George Saunders Revises His Writing

The way I revise is: I read my own text and imagine a little meter in my head, with “P” on one side (“Positive”) and “N” on the other (“Negative”). The game is to read the story the way I would read someone else’s – noting my honest, in-the-moment reactions – and then edit accordingly.

This involves making thousands of what I’ve come to think of as “micro-decisions.” These are instantaneous, intuitive – I just prefer this to that. It’s something like trying to hit a baseball – you wait (you read), you react – not conceptualizing, not thinking about, you know, the Intended Bat Velocity, or any of that – I just have a feeling and react to that feeling, in the form of a cut phrase, or an added word, or an urge to move this whole section, and so on.

And then I do that over and over, for months, sometimes years, until that needle stays up in the “P” zone for the whole length of the text.

‘First Thohts on Reviision‘ [sic]

George Saunders, short story extraordinaire, has his own newsletter which is, for now, free. Check it out. The guy knows his stuff.

10th December 2021 Add Comment