Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything In Between

by Carole Burns (Editor), Marie Arana (Introduction)

A guide where today’s best writers reveal their secrets. How do writers approach a new novel? Do they start with plot, character, or theme? A. S. Byatt starts with color. E. L. Doctorow begins with an image. In Off the Page , authors tell us how they work, giving insight into their writing process. Gathered from some of today’s best writers―Paul Auster, Martin Amis, Gish Jen, Dan Chaon, Alice McDermott, and many others interviewed on washingtonpost.com’s “Off the Page” series―host Carole Burns has woven their wisdom into chapters illuminating to any writer or reader. How does place influence authors? How do they make a sex scene work? How do they tell when the work is done? Walter Mosley defying genre; Shirley Hazzard on love; Michael Cunningham on these and more from Richard Ford, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Charles Baxter will deepen your appreciation for the art of writing and excite you to try new ways of writing yourself.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Reference, Essays

231 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 2007

About the author

Carole Burns, a freelance reviewer for the Washington Post, was the winner of Ploughshares’ John C. Zacharis First Book Award in 2015 for her story collection, The Missing Woman.

Her debut novel, The Same Country, shortlisted in The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Prize, was published by the London-based Legend Press in autumn 2023.

An American ex-pat now living in Wales, Carole worked as a journalist, including for washingtonpost.com and The New York Times, for some 15 years before moving to the UK, where she is now an Associate Professor in English teaching Creative Writing at the University of Southampton.

Her short fiction has been longlisted in the BBC’s National Short Story Award and published in Mslexia.

Her first book, Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything in Between, was based on her washingtonpost.com interviews with 43 writers including Jhumpa Lahiri, Andrea Levy, Colm Tóibín, Anthony Doerr, Walter Mosley, Richard Ford, and A.S. Byatt.

Reviews

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot quit reading books about craft, about writing, about writers' experiences.

This was an interesting find. I was initially interested because of the subtitle. Beginnings! Hard! Endings! So hard! Everything in between! A little less hard! Flipping through the book in the library stacks, I was like "Oh, so it's like real authors sharing their experiences? I'm down." So it came home with me. I'm promiscuous with my reading sometimes.

Carole Burns (ed) provided a great bunch of writers to interview for this collection. She interviewed each of them and then took pieces of what they shared with her and put them in this book. The book is split into different topics, and so each of the quotes from authors in each section is specifically about that one topic. I mean, basically. I found that annoying but helpful.

Most of this is about fiction-writing, which is not what I'm currently doing in my spare time (aka, every waking moment). But that doesn't make it any less helpful. It puts things in perspective, if nothing else, and reminds me, a budding-or-something writer that it's not easy all the time for anyone, even those really big names of authors who put words down on paper with such a flourish that it's impossible to believe they didn't wake up looking like that.

That's why now when I have really bad days at my computer, I see it as just putting in the hours, waiting. You really have to put in the hours in order to get to that epiphany.
(p138, Alison Smith)

God, no shit, right? All teh hours!

I got a little something out of all of this. It was not a taxing read and gave me something to focus on that was writing-related without actually writing, yay. All in the service of, so they say.

There's so much great quotable material here. This was a library borrow, but if you can get your paws on a copy, it might be nice to own this to have on the shelf to pull out when you're feeling miserable about your own skills, or writing, or whatever. To help you remember that you're not alone. We're all suffering here.

Don't waste time feeling ashamed for being an unpublished writer. Each time you sit alone in a room and give your most honest and complete effort, you've earned the title of writer, particularly on those days when you struggle the hardest, when you spend all afternoon and evening refining an idea or the precise phrasing of a few descriptions, when you're pushing yourself beyond your own abilities. These hard-fought and seemingly inconsequential victories accumulate over time and make all the difference.
(p210-11, John Dalton)

Thank you, John.

So which authors are included in this book? I know you're dying to know.

Martin Amis
Marie Arana
Paul Auster
Doreen Baingana
Russell Banks
Richard Bausch
Charles Baxter
A.S. Byatt
Dan Chaon
Michael Cunningham
John Dalton
E.L. Doctorow
Anthony Doerr
Stuart Dybek
Richard Ford
Tod Goldberg
Elizabeth Graver
Shirley Hazzard
Pam Houston
Maureen Howard
Frances Itani
Gish Jen
Edward P. Jones
Jhumpa Lahiri
Andrea Levy
Margot Livesey
Alice McDermott
John McNally
Walter Mosley
Thisbe Nissen
Joyce Carol Oates
Carolyn Parkhurst
Tim Parks
Marisha Pessl
Joanna Scott
Joan Silber
Alison Smith
Art Spiegelman
Hannah Tinti
Colm Tóibín
Claire Tristram
Tobias Wolff
Mary Kay Zuravleff

[Kate]

I've read about 20 pages of this book in non-sequential order, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a book of opinions, so for one question, 15 different authors will give a paragraph-long response, and they'll all be completely different. I love the variety, because it's not only broad and instructive, but also inclusive. The best books about writing are the ones that show you something new but don't instruct; through showing the struggles of other writers, I feel less like my own writing is hopelessly flawed, and more like I'm still getting there.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't heard of a lot of these writers, but they still had some good things to say. I finally got an idea, while I was reading this, which enabled me to start writing a story I'd been planning for half a year, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to think about writing on a technical level. And I definitely have some new books and authors I'll be wanting to check out.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok.

[Bill Ibelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book in which writers talk about the many aspects of writing. Excerpts from longer interviews in the Washington Post. Good book but of spotty interest because so many of the entries focus on books I haven't read. While this works some of the time, others it feels like a friend talking about a person you have never met, assuming that you know them. Still, many of the insights are riveting, so definitely worth the read.

[Judith H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating glimpses into the sometimes surprising but always illuminating ways in which writers approach their craft, beautifully organised by Burns.

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of great wisdom in this book, but too much of the advice relied upon knowledge of the individual authors' oeuvre, and since all of the contributors are contemporary, I unfortunately have read very little of their work. Since most of the contributors appear in several different chapters, I almost would have preferred to have some longer essays instead of the short snippets that are sometimes profound but often don't say very much. Also, as a nonfiction writer, I would have loved to have seen a chapter on fiction vs. nonfiction or even fiction vs. poetry. The short stories vs. novels chapter was my favorite because one can talk about writing "in general," but the truth of the matter is that different kinds of writing call for different approaches. Still, a great reference book that should have a place on every emerging writer's shelf.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one. There were a lot of good anecdotes in here from some modern masters, including my beloved Michael Cunningham. The contributing authors shared a lot; nothing in these pages is contrived or superficial.

[Saritha]

One of the most heartening books on writing. This is a series of interviews witha uthors like Martin Amis, A.S. Byatt etc., and have been arranged by subject rather than by interview and therein lies the magic of seeing what such fine writers have to say about any given writing-related subject.

[Linda Bonnin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiration for any writer. You can pick it up when you have fifteen minutes or an hour. A must-have for any writer.

[Jennifer]

I'm always game for a book full of how writers work with tidbits of inspiration along the way.

[Holmes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writers writing about writing - advice for writers and writers yet to be. Not my cup of tea though...

[Zezee · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's great to read the authors' thoughts on their work and the writing process.

[Kaylee Marshall]

Excellent.

[Alex Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

time to start that summa reading

[Simonetta Broughton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great to know how hard it is. I learnt about new authors too so I'll be following some of those now

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll eat anything up that has writers talking about their process.