Inspiration from Walter Mosley

This morning, as I was doing some grading for my online class, I listened to this interview with Walter Mosly on the NPR program On Point.

I had heard him interviewed before, so I expected that it would be compelling--but it may have been the most compelling interview with him that I've heard yet.  It was the kind of interview where I wrote some nuggets, and then rewound the interview to make sure that I had captured the words correctly.

Here's the part that grabbed me most:

"All you have to do is take 100 days, and every morning for a hundred days, write for one hour about the same thing, not different things, a story you want to tell."

I've been feeling frustrated with my inability to make progress on my novel that I'm writing.  So, let me think about this possible approach.  What would happen if I committed to a half hour with my novel each and every morning?

I know that I was happier back in that period of November to mid-January when I was doing more sketching which led to more writing and then back to more sketching.  My brain felt like it was popping and connecting and leaping--I felt more alive.  I need to get that feeling back, and writing for the first half hour might be the way.

Here's Mosley on revision: 

"You read the book, you find mistakes, you say, I'm gonna fix them. . . . On the 26th time you read the book, and you realize you don't know how to fix them.  That's how you know the book is finished."

It's an interesting twist on revision--most people will tell you to read and fix until all the problems are fixed.  Mosley admits that there will come a point where there are still problems, but you've done all you can do.  I like that approach.

And here's Mosley on why we should do this writing work:

"If you don't exist in literature, in fictional literature, you don't exist in history in America.  You just don't. And so, the idea of talking about that migration of black people from the western south to southern California and to a bit in central California, to write that story is to make the people who I know and love a part of history."

It's an interesting way to situate fiction--it's not about how we're written into history, official or unofficial, that preserves us, but how we're written into fiction.  Inspiring!

It's more than just giving voice to the underrepresented--it's preserving the voices.