Ask the Author: William Kinsolving
Answered Questions (6)
William Kinsolving
One night, my wife, Susan Kinsolving the poet and novelist, came down to my office where she knew I was thrashing around looking for that good idea that makes for the excitement to write something new. She had circled a footnote in a book she’d just finished, Nella Larson’s wonderful novel, PASSING. The footnote referred to the infamous Rhinelander trial in 1925. I’d never heard of it, but trials lend themselves to dramatizing and/or storytelling. I began to research the times and people involved and soon knew I was onto something far more exciting than the trial – which for its own part proved to be about much more than its shocking denouement. The result is my novel, BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER. Find out more on my website,
williamkinsolving.com.
williamkinsolving.com.
William Kinsolving
I wish the answer were simple. Because I write in different forms – novels, screenplays, plays, even a musical, I start out with trying to figure which form will best serve the subject I want to write about. For instance, the novel coming out now,
BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER, focuses on a very spectacular trial. That obviously is perfect for a theatrical telling. But then there is the unique, conflicted love story, which would be ideal movie material. But the complexity of both the law and the romance clearly could not be adequately told in the limited frame of either form, so I started research in order to write the book.
How do I get inspired? I’m not sure it’s inspiration. It’s more the excitement of a good idea. The first thing I ever wrote was a play. Then I wrote screenplays and doctored them in Hollywood – where I admit any inspiration was coupled with money. But by then, the habit of writing had become visceral, and when I wasn’t writing, (Hollywood is not consistent in its employment) I was unhappy, filled with self-doubt, self-loathing and self-indulgence – the usual in that sunny clime. Ironically, I convinced 20th-Century Fox to let me write an idea I’d just pitched them as a novel before writing the screenplay. It became a best seller, and I haven’t written a screenplay since.
BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER, focuses on a very spectacular trial. That obviously is perfect for a theatrical telling. But then there is the unique, conflicted love story, which would be ideal movie material. But the complexity of both the law and the romance clearly could not be adequately told in the limited frame of either form, so I started research in order to write the book.
How do I get inspired? I’m not sure it’s inspiration. It’s more the excitement of a good idea. The first thing I ever wrote was a play. Then I wrote screenplays and doctored them in Hollywood – where I admit any inspiration was coupled with money. But by then, the habit of writing had become visceral, and when I wasn’t writing, (Hollywood is not consistent in its employment) I was unhappy, filled with self-doubt, self-loathing and self-indulgence – the usual in that sunny clime. Ironically, I convinced 20th-Century Fox to let me write an idea I’d just pitched them as a novel before writing the screenplay. It became a best seller, and I haven’t written a screenplay since.
William Kinsolving
I just now have a book coming out: BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER, based on the infamous Rhinelander trial in the 1920s that reveals the truth beyond the law about the corruscating effects of money, privilege, racism and sex during that notorious decade in America.
Later this year, I hope to be finished and will publish what I call The Antebellum Books, two historical novels about that period in American history leading so inevitably toward our Civil War. I didn’t want to write about that, as everyone and his mother has written about the Civil War, most of it better than I could ever do.
When our country recently began its ineluctable division in politics, economics and violence, I wanted to write about how the mos destructive division in our history began that lead to the nation’s war with itself. I start in The Antebellum Books in 1846, with the Mexican War, similar to our descent in the present which began with a “small” foreign war, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, now Iran, take your pick. Being a storyteller, I tell it through three Virginia brothers of vastly different fates, and an astonishing Charleston woman of character who manages to survive -- or enjoy -- the extremities of the cultural, political and violent extremes that come her way. These first two books bring the reader up to James Buchanan’s election night in November, 1856. My plan is to write one or two more to take us up to Fort Sumter – which is as close as I want to get to the Civil War!
Later this year, I hope to be finished and will publish what I call The Antebellum Books, two historical novels about that period in American history leading so inevitably toward our Civil War. I didn’t want to write about that, as everyone and his mother has written about the Civil War, most of it better than I could ever do.
When our country recently began its ineluctable division in politics, economics and violence, I wanted to write about how the mos destructive division in our history began that lead to the nation’s war with itself. I start in The Antebellum Books in 1846, with the Mexican War, similar to our descent in the present which began with a “small” foreign war, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, now Iran, take your pick. Being a storyteller, I tell it through three Virginia brothers of vastly different fates, and an astonishing Charleston woman of character who manages to survive -- or enjoy -- the extremities of the cultural, political and violent extremes that come her way. These first two books bring the reader up to James Buchanan’s election night in November, 1856. My plan is to write one or two more to take us up to Fort Sumter – which is as close as I want to get to the Civil War!
William Kinsolving
I’m not good enough to give anyone advice about writing. It remains a thrilling struggle for me to fill every page. What I do tell anyone who asks is first, to develop
an unbreakable discipline, a commitment of time to do the work. Mine is the first 6 to 8 hours of the day, no matter when the day might start due to excesses the night before. I overlook holidays and weekends, working until I know I need a break, usually when I start speaking gibberish to my wife.
And if you’re going to write novels, I urge you to be sure to find something to write about that’ll keep you excited for a year or two (a lot of people write faster) while you write it. And along with that, you have to be strong enough to throw a hundred pages out if you discover that far along that the book – for any of an infinite number of good reasons – just isn’t working out. I’ve had a lot of false starts, and know the pain of what I’m advising.
And finally, accept the joy of rewriting and do it as many times as you can until they tear the manuscript out of your bleeding hands! You’ll always find something you can write better, not even to mention ever-more typos!
an unbreakable discipline, a commitment of time to do the work. Mine is the first 6 to 8 hours of the day, no matter when the day might start due to excesses the night before. I overlook holidays and weekends, working until I know I need a break, usually when I start speaking gibberish to my wife.
And if you’re going to write novels, I urge you to be sure to find something to write about that’ll keep you excited for a year or two (a lot of people write faster) while you write it. And along with that, you have to be strong enough to throw a hundred pages out if you discover that far along that the book – for any of an infinite number of good reasons – just isn’t working out. I’ve had a lot of false starts, and know the pain of what I’m advising.
And finally, accept the joy of rewriting and do it as many times as you can until they tear the manuscript out of your bleeding hands! You’ll always find something you can write better, not even to mention ever-more typos!
William Kinsolving
It’s gotta be two questions: 1) What’s the best thing about being a successful, self-supporting writer; and 2) What’s the best thing about struggling to be a writer?
Some of the answers are the same: freedom, to create what you want, as oblivious as you want to be to what anyone might require of you, to work when you want, without hourly structures or adult supervision. Clearly the difference between the two questions is the level of comfort each suggests. I spent a long time fleeing from one shag-rug studio apartment in the flats of Los Angeles to another when getting into screenwriting, subsisting on thin, self-mashed smoothies. But then I wrote my first novel in Kim Novak’s former tower-and-glass house built out on the rocks of the Carmel Highlands eating Venetian calves liver a la veronique. Yes, I preferred the latter.
Some of the answers are the same: freedom, to create what you want, as oblivious as you want to be to what anyone might require of you, to work when you want, without hourly structures or adult supervision. Clearly the difference between the two questions is the level of comfort each suggests. I spent a long time fleeing from one shag-rug studio apartment in the flats of Los Angeles to another when getting into screenwriting, subsisting on thin, self-mashed smoothies. But then I wrote my first novel in Kim Novak’s former tower-and-glass house built out on the rocks of the Carmel Highlands eating Venetian calves liver a la veronique. Yes, I preferred the latter.
William Kinsolving
I honestly don’t believe in it. That’s not to say I haven’t come up against an insurmountable wall while trying to write a story. But I didn’t stop working, even though I might have sat for hours, sometimes days without writing a word, or throwing out my repetitious attempts to solve whatever problem I had. I have to believe every writer hits that wall on occasion. The trick is not to give in to the temptation to give up, use it as an excuse, hope for sympathy and go play tennis. You spend the hours, you don’t distract from allowing your brain to do the ineffable struggle to solve the problem, you sit there on your usual schedule, trying to figure out whatever you must to continue the work. It’ll come. It always has for me.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more