Q&A with Adam Haslett discussion

Writing is a solitary job. Which is, I think, one of the reasons people are often keen to discuss it. It can be lonely. In this thread, I'm taking any questions readers might have about the practice of writing.

Adam,

I have not yet read your books but I have them on my list. I appreciate that you are taking the time to participate in this forum.

I read your list of favorite books/authors in another response and wonder if, as a writer, can you simply enjoy a book however it is written or do you find yourself distracted by dissecting and analyzing the style, sentence structure, characters, etc.?

It's a good question. I was dyslexic as a child and learned to read later than most and in a deliberately phonetic manner. I believe this is one of the reasons I've always been drawn to individual sentences as much as I have been to entire stories or books (that's some of what my recent article on the art of the sentence was about). As a result, I'm always highly aware of the language, prose rhythm, and music or lack of music in fiction. I'm not sure I'd say it was a distraction; it's simply how I read. But it does mean that if a book doesn't excite me from one paragraph to the next I'm liable to put it down sooner rather than later. I suppose you could say I'm a sentence hedonist in this way. I want to be sung to. Within limits of course. Any piece of writing can be too rich, and ornateness and complexity aren't the only forms of stimulation. But to answer your question, I don't think I've ever read much beyond the newspaper without noticing the syntax.

Hi Adam,

Can you share any insights about the use of true events in fiction--I'm curious about how writers find a balance between research and invention.

Thanks for taking these questions!

Adam,

Thanks for writing all your stuff. After accidentally coming across YOU ARE NOT A STRANGER HERE and really really enjoying it, I've added you to my short list of read everything this writer writes.

I just received UNION ATLANTIC as an ebook for my birthday on the 3d, and again accidentally came across you coming online for a couple of days.

I'm a third of the way through UNION ATLANTIC

I'm a third of the way through UNION ATLANTIC again really enjoying the journeys of the characters, both internally and externally.

Questions that come to mind about your writing process are first do you prefer short story writing over novel writing? and secondly, do you follow a daily writing schedule every day?

To answer Katie's question first, the relationship between invention and research isn't so much a balance--it's all invention in fiction--but a question of how granular you chose to make the details you offer of the world you're evoking. When it came to finance, I had to assume the readers would be as curious as I myself was about this world. That's the only honest guide any writer has. We don't poll the audience (thank god). In short, don't write what you know; write what interests you. For a time, finance interested me and so I wrote about it. In a sense, I quenched my intellectual thirst for knowledge of that domain and so can move on to other things now. The amount of research reflected my own curiosity, and I didn't go far beyond that.

And as for John's question about writing schedule, it's usually nine in the morning until three in the afternoon, though that's not a schedule I keep every week of the year. It depends where one is with a project.