How To Shit

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Excerpts:

....I don’t like talking about “how to write fiction.” I don’t like “craft” terms. Discussions about craft reinforce what feels to me to be an institutionalized paradigm for fiction dictated by the publishing industry. When I think of “narrative,” conventionally speaking .... It’s all very reasonable. It’s also very limited.

....And so in writing, I think a lot about how to shit. What kind of stink do I want to make in the world? [I learn by digesting my own delusions. My shit becomes the shit I eat.] It’s often very disgusting. The process requires as much self-awareness and honesty as I’m capable of having. It requires the courage to be hostile and contradictory. My creativity seems to gain traction out of this relationship with reality: I hate you, I hate myself, I love myself, you love me, I love you, I hate you, ad infinitum. I am interested in my own hypocrisy. It provides the turbulence for me to change.

....I like something Slavoj Zizek said in a video about Hitchcock’s “The Birds”: “If something gets too traumatic, too violent, even too filled in with enjoyment [that] it shatters the coordinates of our reality, we have to fictionalize it.” It runs in tandem with advice I’ve given to people who’ve asked me how to write fiction: “What’s your problem?” I think artifice exists as a container for realities that can’t be safely contained otherwise.

....In thinking about your approach to your own work, you might consider your ideal reader. Write to your mother. Write to your best friend. Write to the love of your life. Write to your worst enemy. I think you’ll discover that the work for the enemy will be of highest quality. It will be the most daring and smart....