More on Robert Caro's research & writing methods

Posted by Argonsnorts
Apr 24, 2019 at 06:43 AM

washere wrote:
>Most super gifted old school writers though just had some notes and
>their brain functioned as supercomputers or better yet super minds. That
>was before word processors. When it works like that, the results are
>magical, better than any meticulous planning or walls of notes or apps.
>You just get in the zone and everything magically interconnects in time.
>Almost mystical process within the neural nets and beyond, takes hold.
>Maybe that’s why the really great works are all older.

Any “old school writers” you’re thinking of in particular?

For my part, I’m generally skeptical of any suggestion that the writing process is, or ever was, magical. And I think that romanticized accounts of creativity and book-writing, even if true in some cases, are generally unhelpful to aspiring writers.

Given that I am an unrepentant CRIMPer (long-time reader/observer of this forum) and a diligent note-taker/planner/outliner, I found that I appreciated Charles Dickens and his novels far more after I learned about his exhaustive note-taking, outlining, planning, and drafting processes for his novels (see Manfred Kuehn’s notes on Dickens’ “Plan Sheets”: http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2011/12/charles-dickens-plan-sheets.html ).

It seems that, until somewhat recently, the romanticization of book-writing is something that writers themselves were eager to perpetuate, perhaps as a way of preserving the mystique of their craft or establishing a kind of mythical standing for themselves. For example, William Faulkner claimed to have written _As I Lay Dying_ in six weeks without changing a word—“Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” (By chance I was able to see the typescripts at a library once and I was pleased to find that there were quite a lot of edits on them.:)

So, I really appreciate recent efforts by writers and creative workers to demystify their own creative processes—like Robert Caro’s _Working_, John McPhee’s _Draft No. 4_, as well as the Paris Review interview series. I guess I’m just pleased to find out tha tmy favorite writers and creators, from any time period, are just as human as I am, and that their works are not the result of magic, but a result of learning, study, diligent effort, trial-and-error, and, oftentimes, outlining. :)

While I’m at it, I’ll just quickly note a few other favorite resources on process that might be of interest to others on the forum. Two books: Annie Dillard’s _Writing Life_ and Anne Lamott’s _Bird by Bird_. Two podcasts: “Longform” (interviews with journalists about the nitty-gritty details of their writing long non-fiction articles) and a new one by the musicians Aimee Mann and Ted Leo called “The Art of Process,” where they interview creative people of all kinds about how they work. Two films about painting: _Gerhard Richter Painting_ and _Tim’s Vermeer_. (It is well worth watching even just the trailers for both films.)