Re: What is your creative process?

Description: Andersen discusses his creative process. For him, it is both a solo and collaborative effort.

Transcript:

The joy I . . . the pleasures I get out of writing – of writing non-fiction, or writing essays, which is really what I do these days in journalism – is . . . is mostly a figuring out what I think. You know, I wrote a piece about trying to figure out what I think about the current nightmare debacle of Iraq in terms of what U.S. policy should be, and what the debate should be. And that’s such a, you know, complicated – just profoundly complicated – thing to figure out, for me anyway. That it was only through writing and thinking it through that I was able to begin to figure out what I really did think we should or shouldn’t do. Or how long, or when we should leave and all of those things. So I . . . I find . . . you know, I sometimes begin a piece like that with a basic sentence, but I often find that it is only . . . usually find that it is only through the writing that I get any clarity in my own mind.

For fiction, the pleasure – the joy – is being god of my own little world. And creating this world and these characters. In this latest book, in the middle of the 19th Century, and while . . . as other fiction writers have said, they take on their own life and surprise one – the author – by doing things you didn’t expect. Still you are god. And . . . and . . . and so that’s hugely fun. And since I’m relatively a new writer and I’ve been dabbling . . . I’ve dabbled in fiction before the last 11 years, but I’ve only been publishing . . . And I still feel like, as I expect to feel for the rest of my life, that I’m still figuring it out; so that the joy of . . . of . . . of kind of, if not mastering, at least having good moments of figuring out how to do this . . . this thing that again, because of my childhood and my parents sort of worship of fiction – great novels – I feel as though, you know, it’s . . . if not the highest, best calling, at least one of them. And . . . and . . . and when I feel as though I can . . . I’ve gotten a line right, or a character, or a paragraph, or a chapter, I . . . that is ___________.

But any kind of writing – non-fiction or fiction – is a struggle. It’s a very, you know, moment-to-moment struggle of figuring out the right . . . where the right sentence, the right paragraph, the right page, the right structure for the larger thing. And when you’re writing a book – my two novels have been 600 odd pages – that’s . . . there’s . . . that becomes an enormous structure to . . . to try to . . . to try to get as right as possible. So that’s . . . It’s a . . . It’s a pleasurable struggle when you’re done; but it is a struggle while it’s going on. I actually find the work of writing fiction less of a struggle, less of a stressful procedure than I do writing a 1,700 word essay. That to me is . . . the . . . the essay, or journalism really is sort of . . . is almost pure struggle. And then I’m only happy when I’m done. Whereas fiction actually . . . writing fiction has moments of . . . of pleasure amid the struggle while it’s going on.

My creative process . . . depending . . . it depends on what I’m doing. To the degree my life now is divided among working alone in a room, essentially, writing fiction or writing essays, it’s a matter of . . . of doing whatever research is necessary and then just being at home with all of whatever facts there are, notes, thoughts, stray . . . stray bits . . . and letting that marinate until I can figure out a way that it looks interesting, or enlightening, or entertaining to write a page. So I don’t have a . . . but it . . . but it requires for me . . . it requires to do what I consider good writing to be alone in a room for, you know, a few hours at a time. And then whatever alchemy happens, happens. But then the other half of my creative life, which is doing Studio 360 as well as doing magazines – editing magazines in the past – is this entire collaborative process, entirely or significantly and vastly different from the creative process of writing, which is about finding a team of people with whom you’re comfortable, but not identical; and being open to all of the various ideas and approaches that that team brings. And if you’re a leader of the team, trying to. . . to inspire those people to do good work and . . . and . . . and keep a vision of what it is you’re trying to do collaboratively so that it’s not just a collection of 10 different people doing 10 different things, but all fits into the . . . into the large vision. And so as I said those are very different. I get satisfaction out of both, and . . . and very happy that I . . . Literally my days are divided between those two forms of creative process. So you know, by the time I’m done doing a radio program, and all the meetings, and conversations, and all the back and forth that that requires, I’m very happy to be . . . the next morning, to go back in my room and spend five hours alone. Recorded On: 7/5/07