I first discovered George Saunders’s writing as a college student, home for summer break. Tenth of December had just come out, and I picked it up at the sole independent bookstore in my hometown on the recommendation of a writing professor. At this moment in my life, I was feeling a bit disillusioned with literature. My reading assignments for school weren’t especially resonating with me, and I no longer liked what I was writing, either—I felt cornered into a style that no longer excited nor suited me, but I had no idea what style I did want to embody.
I began reading Tenth of December right away, at the bookstore’s neighboring Starbucks (the best one could do for a sit-in coffee shop in suburban Pennsylvania circa 2013). Inside those pages was what I had been looking for all along, but hadn’t known until I found it: writing that felt wholly original, and so completely, exhilaratingly alive. I urgently took to social media, imploring my followers to read it: “I humbly request that everyone with a soul read Tenth of December and if your life isn’t changed by it then you need to read it again.” (The post received only one like—from my roommate at the time—so I unfortunately can’t claim to have had much influence on the book’s success, despite my best efforts.)
I’ve since read all of Saunders’s work and can firmly say that my 19-year-old self’s words stand true for each of his books, including his latest novel, Vigil. Saunders’s writing speaks straight into the soul, into what it is to be human: the absurdity, the beauty, the pain—all at once. As he nods to in his interview below, he is a writer who always strives to balance both the light and the dark; his mastery at striking that balance is, for me, what makes his work so singular and special. I’m thrilled he took the time to provide some insights on the writing life—and his personal process—for Electric Lit’s 23 Questions series.
– Katie Henken Robinson
Senior Editor
1. In a six-word story, describe the process of writing Vigil.
George Saunders: Freedom, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, breakthrough.
2. What book should everyone read growing up?
GS: I’m ecumenical about a question like this, feeling, pretty much, “They should read whatever grabs them.” For me, I’m grateful to have read Johnny Tremaine, recommended (and procured from the library) for me by a nun I was in love with.
3. Write alone or in community?
GS: Alone. VERY alone.
4. How do you start from scratch?
GS: In a spirit of playfulness, with as few ideas or intentions as possible, so I can more quickly see my way to the fun.
5. If you were a book, which one would you be?
GS: I’d aspire to be a slender book with a lot of energy, and a cover that was flashy but not ostentatious, and also there’d be a slot inside, to hide a twenty-dollar bill, so everyone would want to read me.
6. Describe your ideal writing day.
GS: Nothing big to worry about and a five-hour empty space from, say, 10am until 3pm, and then it turns out to be a victorious day, full of revelations and decent jokes on the page, and then Paula and I go out to dinner. Also, maybe there could be a rainbow.
7. Typing or longhand?
GS: Typing. When I was writing Vigil, I kept a notebook in which I wrote longhand and did sketches and outlines and so on. But I always edit on paper, with a very sharp Blackwing 602.
8. What’s a piece of writing advice you never want to hear again?
GS: “George, stop writing, you’re boring everyone. Just go back to working at the slaughterhouse, you total drag.”
9. What’s a piece of writing advice you think everyone needs to hear?
GS: “Writing is rewriting.” Because, really, it is and to believe that is such a blessing—no more writer’s block, no more obsessing about whether you’re writing the right story. As Robert Frost was alleged to have said: “Don’t worry: work.” (Although I’ve also heard that what he said was the exact opposite: “Don’t work: worry.”) But I prefer the former.
10. How do you know if an idea is a short story, versus a novel?
GS: Well, for the two novels I’ve written, it was just a feeling that produced a very brief, one or two sentence outline that just felt like it might take a little longer to unpack (and would tolerate a more prolonged treatment). So, as is the case with so much of my “process”—it’s about feeling and intuition.
11. What is one thing teaching writing has taught you about craft?
GS: That good work comes from deep inside a person and wants to get out into the world. So it’s a natural thing, to be creative, and “craft” is really just the process of arranging things so we can do the maximum amount of highly personal choosing in the text. I see this again and again with my students—the more they lower themselves into the work and start really expressing their (what I call) “micro-opinions,” the more present they are in the resulting text.
12. What’s your favorite comfort snack?
GS: Graham crackers or pretzels, sometimes both at once, or alternately.
13. What’s the best way to push through writer’s block?
GS: Put your faith in revision—write any old thing, in the confidence that you can whip it into shape by rewriting it. As David Foster Wallace used to say, writer’s block comes from applying too-stringent standards (and too early in the game, I would add).
14. What’s your relationship to being edited?
GS: I love it, mostly because I have two great editors—Andy Ward at Random House and Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker. They are very ego-free editors and when working with them the feeling is that we are working in service of the story, which isn’t (at that point) mine and isn’t theirs. We’re like doctors huddled over a patient we love.
15. Write every day or write when inspired?
GS: Every day. The inspiration, such as it is, comes then. So much of writing is reaction, I think—so if I don’t feel like writing, I sit down and try, and pretty soon will find myself reacting to something I’ve already done (either positively or negatively)—and that, right there, IS writing.
16. What other art forms and literary genres inspire you?
GS: Music—it just makes me happy, which somehow, for me, inspires ambition.
17. Who was the writer who made you want to write?
GS: Esther Forbes, then Hemingway/Thomas Wolfe/Steinbeck, then Raymond Carver. And after that, the floodgates opened (Tobias Wolff, Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, Barry Hannah, Stuart Dybek, Issac Babel etc, etc).
18. How do you know when you’ve reached the end?
GS: It’s kind of like painting a wall. I keep looking for blotchy places and touching those up. And then there’ll come a time when I approve of the whole wall, except there’s one little unpainted corner (i.e., the last few pages of the book).
19. Describe your writing space.
GS: A little black table in our place in Los Angeles, under a TV we can’t figure out how to get down, with a few meaningful postcards I bring along with me from place to place, such as this, from Ed Ruscha: “Every artist wants to make a picture that will open the gates to heaven.”
20. How do you keep your favorite writers close to you?
GS: I tend to kidnap them and keep them in the basement, for consultation and forced rewrites of my stories. No—by re-reading them, but also, once a writer moves you, they are always there, in your modified view of the world.
21. What’s the last indie bookstore you went to?
GS: Skylight Books in Los Angeles—a great, beautifully run, welcoming store.
22. What does evolving as a writer mean to you?
GS: Being more capable of representing both the light and the dark.
23. Outside of literature, what are you obsessed with?
GS: Meditation, learning to play lead guitar better, trying to be a better person before it’s too late.
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