Drunken Boat asked me to write an essay about music.
I started writing about music. Then wrote about my writing process. And an unfortunate episode trying to write a novel with note cards.
Check it out here.
And here’s a short excerpt:
“Writing a novel takes a long, long time. It’s not one line or one scene or one character. It’s a bigger body of work. It has to work together—your beginning, your middle and your end. Your characters and your setting and your themes. The tropes and the objects that you repeat. It’s the full body of work, rather than the great line, that makes the novel great. It’s the grand overall that makes it sing, not the one pretty line on page 69.”
