Chekhov's Mistress
National Slowetry Month: Javier Marías On Writing Slow
Javier Marías as quoted from his “Art of Fiction No. 190” Paris Review interview (Issue 179, Winter 2006):
“I lose time in the sense that I very rarely write more than one page per day, sometimes two, which means that I don’t advance very quickly. Until I have finished one page the best possible way and have rewritten it as many times as necessary, I don’t move on to the next. Many writers I know write a first draft and then revise again and again. On page two hundred they realize that it would be better if they had said something different on page one or two. They change page one or page two, but that is precisely what I never do. Even it would make things easier if I hadn’t said this or that on page five, I won’t change it. If I wrote that something would happen or be said by a certain character, then on page two hundred I must stick to it.“
Marías elaborates on this a bit more, but note, what is truly slow about his writing style is not the one page per day, but his discipline in perfecting each page before moving on – not altering his earlier pages. That method requires an enormous amount of forethought and (grandmaster level) chess-like precision.
comments
probably this is also what demands a slow reading of his books, his long, detailed elaborated sentences. I like that. Like a Fugue somehow.
– antonia (04/09 at 11:39 AM)
Page 1 of 1 pages of comments
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: April 03, 2007
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
