How does a new work begin for you?
Originally asked
The Paris Review, to novelists and poets, The Art of Fiction
A recurrent craft question in The Paris Review's Art of Fiction interviews; wording varies between character, theme, first sentence, image, and idea.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Recorded
Agathe Snow
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said elsewhere, not written here
It’s funny. Before, it used to be that I’d travel somewhere. I always had a storyline, some kind of grounding element. I used to go somewhere and just take over a space and go find things and find elements. That was how I used to do it. But since I had Cyrus I’ve had to do things only in the studio and shift it, so it’s very different for me now. I’m constantly writing in my book and coming up with things, mostly from things I read. I have all these ideas and I just write them and then some make it out. Most of them don’t. I was reading [Jorge Luis] Borges’ Labyrinths about six months ago. That really spoke to me, and that’s when I started doing the [painting series titled] Endless Sunsets. It’s like a labyrinth, something you can never get out of and there’s really no point in it, a brain maze kind of thing.
Annie Bielski, The Creative Independent interview
source ↗
Robert Wilson
Theatre director and designer; creator of Einstein on the Beach
I usually start with a structure. The structure is quite rigid. So I have a strong form or frame. A work like Einstein on the Beach is like that: Act One, Two, Three, Four. Act One is A and B. Act Two is C and A. Act Three is B and C. And Act Four is all three together, A, B, and C. So, I knew it was going to be based on theme and variation, and once I get that, I can be freer to fill in the form. Without it, I don’t know how to fill it in – it’s like an architect builds an apartment building: you can live in the building, I can live in the building, other people can live in the building. They each have their apartment to their own liking, but the building has a cohesion because the architect has built it.
Recorded
The Talks interview, 17 September 2014
source ↗
Yeah, I think it’s a combination of all those things, really. I think narrative is significant and important to me. And I think most of the narratives that really struck me were about history or were narratives that I received in ways that were abstract, so they were kind of nonlinear narratives that I pulled from, for example, music. You know, music was a huge inspiration to me growing up, I grew up listening to a lot of reggae music, a lot of dancehall, dub. If you listen to that music, I think one of the things you realize is that those particular artists, those legendary artists who were making that music in the ’70s and ’80s, and even to some degree in the ’60s, were really good at provoking you to go on your own journey with the information that they were giving you in the music. For me, one of the things about artistic practice is not about providing some solution, but instead provoking curiosity about some things that you should find on your own and not be led to.
Recorded
Amanda Gluibizzi, The Brooklyn Rail, In Conversation, 1 June 2022
source ↗
No doubt. I’ve written at times about the spooky element in writing. You go in each morning, and there’s a blank page. Maybe it takes five minutes, maybe it takes an hour. Sooner or later you start writing, and then the words begin to flow. Where does that come from? You can’t pinpoint it. You always wonder, “Will it all stop tomorrow?” In that sense it’s spooky. In other words, you’re relying on a phenomenon that’s not necessarily dependable. That’s a particular kind of fear but there are other fears in writing of an altogether different sort.
Recorded
Academy of Achievement interview, 2004
source ↗
My videos are architecture for sets of ideas. The structure of the video houses those ideas.
Recorded
Laurel Schwulst, The Creative Independent interview
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