揭秘骗子灰色“成绩单” 白领学生“最受伤”

Image by Angela Rad-ules-cu via Wiki-me-dia Com-mons

It is some-times the case that a favorite writer isn’t ter-ri-bly inter-est-ing when it comes to talk-ing shop.  This has nev-er been so with the self-reveal-ing Toni Mor-ri-son, whose pub-lic appear-ances and inter-views often dupli-cate the expe-ri-ence of read-ing one of her novels—her voice draws you in, and before you know it, you’re part of a world all her own that she has giv-en you the priv-i-lege of join-ing for a short time.

This is the expe-ri-ence of read-ing her inter-view with Elis-sa Schap-pell in the Paris Review. Mor-ri-son dis-cours-es on sub-jects rang-ing from her per-son-al rou-tine and his-to-ry, to her iden-ti-ty as a writer and a woman, to the larg-er his-to-ry of slav-ery and the black lives she writes about. Woven through it all are obser-va-tions about her art that may or may not be of any use to bud-ding writ-ers, but which will cer-tain-ly make lovers of Mor-ri-son read her work a lit-tle dif-fer-ent-ly. Some of her obser-va-tions are below:

• Write when you know you’re at your best. For her, this hap-pened to be the ear-ly morn-ing, pre-dawn hours, before her chil-dren woke up, since she worked full-time and feels she is “not very bright or very wit-ty or very inven-tive after the sun goes down.” Mor-ri-son describes her morn-ing rit-u-al this way:

I always get and make a cup of cof-fee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the cof-fee and watch the light come.

• “There’s a line between revis-ing and fret-ting” It’s impor-tant for a writer to know when they are “fret-ting,” because if some-thing isn’t work-ing, “it needs to be scrapped,” although in answer to whether she goes back over pub-lished work and wish-es she had fret-ted more, Mor-ri-son answers, “a lot. Every-thing.”
• A good edi-tor is “like a priest or a psy-chi-a-trist.” Mor-ri-son worked as an edi-tor for Ran-dom House for 20 years before she pub-lished her first nov-el. She observes the rela-tion-ship between writer and edi-tor by say-ing that get-ting the wrong one means that “you are bet-ter off alone.” One of the marks of a good edi-tor? She doesn’t “love you or your work,” there-fore offers crit-i-cism, not com-pli-ments.
• Don’t write with an audi-ence in mind, write for the char-ac-ters. Know-ing how to read your own work—with the crit-i-cal dis-tance of a good reader—makes you a “bet-ter writer and edi-tor.” For Mor-ri-son, this means writ-ing not with an audi-ence in mind, but with the char-ac-ters to go to for advice, to tell you “if the ren-di-tion of their lives is authen-tic or not.”
• Con-trol your char-ac-ters. Despite the ever-present and clichéd demand to “write what you know,” Mor-ri-son stu-dious-ly tries to avoid tak-ing char-ac-ter traits from peo-ple she knows. As she puts it: “mak-ing a lit-tle life for one-self by scav-eng-ing oth-er people’s lives is a big ques-tion, and it does have moral and eth-i-cal impli-ca-tions.” And as for keep-ing con-trol of her char-ac-ters, Mor-ri-son says “They have noth-ing on their minds but them-selves and aren’t inter-est-ed in any-thing but them-selves. So you can’t let them write your book for you.”
• Plot is like melody; it does-n’t need to be com-pli-cat-ed. Mor-ri-son sums up her approach to plot in Jazz and The Bluest Eye by say-ing “I put the whole plot on the first page.” Rather than con-struct-ing intri-cate plots with hid-den twists, she prefers to think of the plot in musi-cal terms as a “melody,” where the sat-is-fac-tion lies in rec-og-niz-ing it and then hear-ing the “echoes and shades and turns and piv-ots” around it.
• Style, like jazz, involves end-less prac-tice and restraint. Speak-ing of Jazz, Mor-ri-son tells she has always thought of her-self like a jazz musi-cian, “some-one who prac-tices and prac-tices and prac-tices in order to able to invent and to make his art look effort-less and grace-ful.” A large part of her “jazz” style, she says, is “an exer-cise in restraint, in hold-ing back.”
• Be your-self, but be aware of tra-di-tion. Of the diver-si-ty of African-Amer-i-can jazz musi-cians and singers, Mor-ri-son says “I would like to write like that. I would like to write nov-els that were unmis-tak-ably mine, but nev-er-the-less fit first into African Amer-i-can tra-di-tions and sec-ond of all, this whole thing called lit-er-a-ture.”

Most read-ers of Morrison’s work would argue that’s exact-ly what she’s done her whole career. Read the entire inter-view here and be sure to vis-it the com-plete archive of Paris Review inter-views online.

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Relat-ed Con-tent:

Writ-ing Tips by Hen-ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar-garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Ray Brad-bury Offers 12 Essen-tial Writ-ing Tips and Explains Why Lit-er-a-ture Saves Civ-i-liza-tion

Sev-en Tips From Ernest Hem-ing-way on How to Write Fic-tion

Josh Jones is a doc-tor-al can-di-date in Eng-lish at Ford-ham Uni-ver-si-ty and a co-founder and for-mer man-ag-ing edi-tor of Guer-ni-ca / A Mag-a-zine of Arts and Pol-i-tics.