May I recommend this interview — Pulitzer-Prize winner Elizabeth Strout with Terry Gross on Fresh Air — to anyone who writes, anyone who wants to write, anyone who has been to law school, anyone who wants to know what it’s like to be a writer, or … well, anyone!
My favorite moments:
10. “An artist has to understand that their art is their life and that it’s their vocation. It’s what they’re going to be doing, and so they have to do whatever keeps them going in their art.”
9. “The law school training I think was actually quite good for my writing because it stripped away the excessive emotion … The law is not interested in that.”
8. “My ears are always open — always open — and people will tell you things. Boy, they really will.”
7. On her early writing: “I had no luck at all. Not even a nibble with any of my stories.”
6. About her first (never published) novel: “It was, you know, a terrible novel, but I wrote it and put it under the bed, and it stayed there for quite some time.”
5. “I remember for many years I had a rule. Three hours or three pages … I’d throw them away the next day, but…”
4. “I was forty-one when my novel Amy and Isabelle was accepted, and I was forty-three when it was published. I did have stories, you know, that came out, very slowly, until then, but it was quite, quite slow. Quite a long haul. And I just kept writing, and writing and writing.” [She laughs here.]
3. On how she kept believing in the face of years of little success: “It was just pure compulsion. Every so often I’d think, well, maybe I should give this up … But I just kept trying – just kept trying a different way, a different way, and eventually I began to find my voice.”
2. In response to “By 58 you had won the Pulitzer,” Ms. Strout replies, “But I was ready to not win it. I was ready to go for it. That’s the important thing.”
And the #1 best quote from the interview:
When asked if she would like to elaborate on her family history of suicide, Ms. Strout answers, “I don’t think so, thanks.”
Perhaps if you’re not a writer doing interviews, you won’t appreciate that last one. But I sure did.
Please do listen to the whole interview. And then have a look at Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, which is stunning.
– Meg
