The Writing Process: Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is one of the authors I admire most. I love her writing because it is so insightful. You can never walk away from her work with less to think about than you approached it with. So, who not better to learn from than her?

I came across this article about her and how she speaks about the practice and process of writing. I had to share.

You teach writing at Princeton. Can writing can be taught?
I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't expect to teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. . . .

I don't want to hear whining about how it's so difficult. Oh, I don't tolerate any of that because most of the people who've ever written are under enormous duress, myself being one them. So whining about how they can't get it is ridiculous. What I can do very well is what I used to do, which is edit. I can follow their train of thought, see where their language is going, suggest other avenues. I can do that, and I can do that very well.
(Interview with Zia Jaffrey, "The Salon Interview With Toni Morrison," Salon.com, February 1998)

Where do you find your inspiration?
Sometimes ideas arrive through reading contradictory things in history books or newspapers; sometimes it's a response or reaction to current events. But that only explains where some of the themes come from. I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.
("Toni Morrison," Time magazine, January 21, 1998)

How do you work? What are the rituals for getting started?
Well, I try to write when I'm not teaching, which means fall and most of the summer. I do get up very early, embarrassingly early, before there is light, and I write with pencil, yellow pads, words, scratchings out, but, you know, long before that, I've spent a couple of years, probably eighteen months, just thinking about these people, the circumstances, the whole architecture of the book, and I sort of feel so intimately connected with the place and the people and the events that when language does arrive, I'm pretty much ready.
(Interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth, "Conversation: Toni Morrison," The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, March 9, 1998)

Who do you write for?
I want to write for people like me, which is to say black people, curious people, demanding people--people who can't be faked, people who don't need to be patronized, people who have very, very high criteria.
(quoted in "Toni Morrison," VG: Voices from the Gaps, February 2007)

What do you mean when you refer to the "music" of prose?
You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.
(Interview with Rosie Blau, "Lunch with the FT: Toni Morrison," Financial Times, November 8, 2008)

My 15-year-old daughter lives to write. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
(Darren Wethers, St. Louis, Missouri)
The work is the work itself. If she writes a lot, that's good. If she revises a lot, that's even better. She should not only write about what she knows but about what she doesn't know. It extends the imagination.
("Toni Morrison Will Now Take Your Questions," Time magazine, May 19, 2008)

How much effort do you put into revising your work?
I love that part; that's the best part, revision. I do it even after the books are bound! Thinking about it before you write it is delicious. Writing it all out for the first time is painful because so much of the writing isn't very good. I didn't know in the beginning that I could go back and make it better; so I minded very much writing badly. But now I don't mind at all because there's that wonderful time in the future when I will make it better, when I can see better what I should have said and how to change it. I love that part!
(Interview with Jane Bakerman, "The Seams Can't Show: An Interview With Toni Morrison," Black American Literature Forum, Summer 1978)

You've talked about how official languages can stifle identity. Do you have any thoughts about the ways that technologies like e-mail and texting are changing how people speak and write?
Language changes--and should--because it is as alive as its speakers and writers. It is stifling or bad only when unclear, mediocre, false or wholly devoid of creative imagination. That may apply to some texting and e-mail, but not all.
(Interview with Christine Smallwood, "Back Talk: Toni Morrison," The Nation, November 19, 2008)

I really enjoyed this read, I hope you did as well. She offers quite a bit of insight, as always, about 

writing.

Here's the link to the About.com website.

The Writing Process

I’m still toiling away at coming up with new story ideas and excerpts worthy enough for the world to see. However, in my writing process, which I have detailed for you before, I decided to look up other authors whose work I enjoy reading to learn about what they go through when they’re in their writing processes. Hence, here’s Eric Jerome Dickey’s writing process. I came across this while reading fellow blogger Dottie's from California's blog. I found the way he approached his literary works to be quite intriguing.

Dottie asked:

What does your writing process involve (i.e. do you get up early and write, write at night, use a computer or write long-hand) (yes, believe it or not, some writers still do write long-hand)? Do you set limits on yourself (I will write 50 pages today)?

And he answered:

No limits. It’s about quality over quantity. I’d rather have four tight pages over two days than 20 sloppy ones. I work a scene at a time, a chapter at a time. Writing a book is not a race. It’s a journey.

There it is, simple and plain. When I wrote my novel, “As I Wait,” I gave myself assignments. I’d write at least ten pages a day, no exceptions. I wrote the book in a month (it was almost 200,000 words); it was good but certainly not great. In the end, I was actually quite disappointed with it. I wasn’t trying to meet a deadline, I just wanted to get it done so people could read it. Although the reviews were pretty good (from my friends and family), I knew my quality of work spanned much farther than that. Therefore, I made no real attempts to get it out there. Same thing with my novel “Edge of Sanity.” They are both well-written novels however, they are both not accurate representations of my level of writing. Hence, I may tell people I’ve written them but I do it in  a way to put it out there so I don’t have to talk about it later. When people ask, “Really? You wrote a book?” I tend to speed through the explanations and sort of roll my eyes at the enthusiastic compliments.

I appreciate the flattery but I’d rather be complimented on work that I actually put the time in; work that I spent a journey on and not a half-hearted race.