“What else? I can tell you that I never begin working on a story until I have a title centered at the top of the first page. I think of the title as the target toward which I shoot the arrow of the story. Then, title in place, I broach my sentences one tiny piece at a time, termiting away at them until I’m satisfied that they present the right effect. Often I become attached to certain simple words — city, song, half, pocket, dead, ceiling, house, silence, wound, light — words that call little attention to themselves, that have nothing antique about them, but that seem to trail a thousand centuries of stories behind them, arriving in a great dust cloud of possibilities.”
You can read more here.
I’m with Brockmeier on much of this article (esp.Victor LaValle’s BIG MACHINE), but am surprised by his process: starting with a title, writing toward that title, and perfecting his work line by line. In MHO this would seem to inhibit creativity and force the work. Clearly, though, it works for him.
Yeah, I don’t think I could work that way either. But everybody’s different. Hope your reading went well over the weekend.
hey andy: your way clearly works for you — you are one (ethel, too!) whose work I always read when i see it. we all have our ways; very few rules are universal.
(non sequitur here, but i have to say that i love that you made termite into a verb. i might steal that, but i’ll probably use a different insect.) 🙂