Lawrence Hill Discusses the Writing Process | Author of The Book of Negros, The Illegal,

Описание: #Lawrence Hill talks about aspects of the writing process. Shot at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival. Part of a longer interview from the series WRITERS' CONFESSIONS.

Writers' Confessions is produced by Michael Glassbourg in collaboration with TraxSoundStudio in Hamilton, Ontario.

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Transcript:

"The first time I wrote passionately, I was very aware of a reader, it was my father, and I was trying to get something I wanted from him in a letter. So I was really focusing all of my six year old attention on writing this letter as powerfully as I could with my limited skills to get the thing I wanted, which was a kitten. So I very much had a reader in mind, and I think it helped to have a sense of passion and urgency, the personal involvement with the thing I was writing about as opposed to just writing something in the abstract. So the first time out the gates, there was very much a reader in mind, it was a father at the kitchen table, arms crossed, and trust me, without a letter you won't get your cat. But these days, and certainly in writing books, I try not to think about a reader while I'm writing. I find it would be kind of intimidating and paralyzing to have a reader in mind, because it prevents me from just relaxing and pleasing myself, and so the first reader I have in mind, and hopefully the only reader I have in mind when I'm writing is me, reading my own stuff and feeling good about it or bad about it, am I satisfied or am I not? Of course I hope that readers come to my work, and I hope to move them, but I don't like to think about them when I'm writing, unless I'm blocked and I suddenly decide to unblock myself by writing part of the book as a letter to a dear friend of mine, and then later on, I can just strip off the "Dear Jack", and just keep what's remaining if it's worth saving. Sometimes I might pretend it's a letter just to get rolling, into imagining a close friend listening. But other than that, which is just a private trick, no, I don't imagine the reader, because I don't want to be beholden to a reader, I don't want to disappoint somebody or live up to their expectations either, I just want to write what bubbles up, and so I'm the reader that I have to please, and I hope I'm the only one when I'm writing. I haven't ever abandoned a book, although I think it takes courage to do so, and I think it's important to do so if you feel that you're really dead in the water, that the process is not unfolding well at all, that is not revealing any richness. I think it's important to be able to walk away from something and say, "You know what, there's something else around the corner that's gonna be richer to mine in this particular vein." I haven't actually abandoned a book yet, although I may, and it wouldn't be a shame if I did. I just generally start thinking about a character, and then I try to find a story to hang on her or his shoulder, so generally speaking, in my case, first thing to come to me is a person in a particular situation, maybe about a person of faith, again, a personality trait, something odd or unique, something unusual about that person. Like I've been thinking about a person that I'm writing about now in the current book, and he's an illegal refugee in rich nation like Canada, but it's an undefined nation, and his predicament in the city, he can't go back to where he came from, 'cause he'd be probably jailed, maybe killed, and he can't come up for air in this rich nation as an illegal refugee, or he'll be instantly deported, and so he's in his condo and he's got to live under the radar screen perpetually, and so I'm thinking about him, and then I really have to find a story to hang on his shoulders, and that's usually how it comes to me, the person in an interesting situation with interesting personalities, and then I find a way to create an excuse for a book."

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