Writers on Writing

There is a fabulous interview in the July 13 edition of Newsweek with six writers discussing the state of the industry. They include two of my favorites: Robert Caro and Susan Orlean as well as Lawrence Block, Elizabeth Strout, Kurt Anderson and Annette Gordon-Reed.

Some themes are prevalent: the worry about the state of the industry, the worry about who will read (buy) their books and the common thread that for all its uncertainly, none of them can think of anything else they would rather do. Which may be the point: great writers have no real choice about whether or not to pursue their craft. Their craft pursues them.

And about that craft. None of them say that it's easy or terribly difficult but that it is arduous. So you better like what you are saying because you are going to be working on saying it for some period of time. as lawrence Block puts it: "If you set out to please yourself, then maybe you will."

As for the future of the industry, Susan Orlean is a big fan of the Kindle and in fact, admits that she just finished reading Madame Bovary on her i-phone: "The book is the book, and the story is the story. But it has certain advantages. You can make the font bigger. You can turn it sideways if you want to read it like that. It was actually probably better than reading it in a cheap paperback."

The point, once again, is that electronic publishing is not going to change the concept of sharing written stories; just the ways in which they are read.

And here's the animal connection, in case you were wondering. Susan Orlean compared the new wave of publishing to trading a horse for a car, way back when.

Her point: "Somebody made this analogy, which I think is extreme, but when cars were developed, people began keeping horses for pets, or if they were really beautiful, they had a beautiful horse for the sake of having a beautiful horse, but they drove a car. I think you're going to continue buying very visual books..."