In this interview with the Guardian, Brian Eno explains the process of creating and naming “ambient” music. It reminds me a great deal of what many writers say about why they write:

My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to, not because I wanted a job as a musician. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist. It’s like having a ready-made formula if you are able to read it.

I recently reread an article about Toni Morrison’s Beloved, with a rather remarkable title. This Eno interview reminded me of another statement I read by Morrison, in which she said that she writes the books she wants to read. I agree with Morrison, so far — that’s why I wrote Alcestis, and that’s what’s motivating me to write Killingly — but I know there must be authors who wouldn’t say the same thing, who would attribute their compulsion to write to other reasons entirely. I can’t imagine that Joan Didion sat down to write The Year of Magical Thinking just because she wanted to read it, for example. But I think that’s always a small part of writerly motivation. You can enjoy the the nebulous ideas that form a book, but not in the same way that you enjoy the book itself.

But then, what to do with writers who, like actors who won’t watch their own movies, insist that they never re-read their finished work? Thoughts? Is the process of completing the book enough for you, as a writer?

Edited to add: Also check Austin Kleon’s post about the same topic, with a riff from John Gardner on “writing what you like.”

For today, a wonderful TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the danger of listening to a single story.

This site now has a shiny new WordPress theme — many thanks to T., my in-house web designer/tech support!

I’ve also added two new pages to the site: one contains an excerpt from Alcestis, and the other features extra bits of material related to the book. If you have any other questions, comments, or suggestions about material for the site, please let me know.

First of all: I’ve added a link to the online invitation to my book launch party on the Events page. If you’re reading this, consider yourself invited — it’ll be held at BookPeople in downtown Austin, February 7, 3 pm.

In other Alcestis news, my ARC giveaway via Goodreads ended yesterday — 1289 people requested an ARC, which is delightfully mind-boggling. I mailed out ARCs to the two winners today!

Very soon I’ll also have an excerpt from the novel to share with you, as well as a recording of me reading that excerpt. T. is slaving over a website redesign as I write, and I’ll be adding the excerpt and podcast as soon as the redesign is ready to go.

And now, links:

• Organizations to support in Haiti: Doctors Without Borders (MSF); Partners in Health.
• Fran Lebowitz on Jane Austen.
• Edan Lepucki describing how she and her husband decided to purge their book collection (something T. and I should probably do, too, and yet probably won’t).
• WSJ piece on the increasing difficulty of breaking out of the slush pile.
• Thought-provoking piece on the shrinking of Vassar’s creative writing program, by a graduate and former adjunct professor there.
• Amazing profile of the only professional vet in Sierra Leone, who has done remarkable things for the street dogs of Freetown and needs help to do more. Aminatta Forna‘s portrayal of the city, the dogs, the doctor, and the differences between Western models of care for animals and west African models of care is sensitive and beautiful, and heartbreaking too.

One last reminder that the two ARCs of Alcestis I’m giving away on GoodReads will only be up for another day — the giveaway ends at midnight on the 15th. As I write this post, more than 1100 people have signed up for the giveaway, in fewer than ten days. That is, quite frankly, crazypants. And it makes me very happy!

A few other links I found today, before I get back to dissertating:

• Justine Larbalestier gives great advice on how to conduct an interview with an author.
• An equally interesting article by Bob Thompson about writing about writers.
• Did you know there were Floating Chapels in New York City in the latter half of the 19th century? (via Holly Tucker on Twitter)
• A book of essays on Joyce Carol Oates’s brilliant and much anthologized short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?“

This delightfully saucy short story by Naomi Novik, which she calls a blend of Orlando, Georgette Heyer, and the Atlantis myth. It was first published in the Fast Ships, Black Sails anthology edited by Anne and Jeff VanderMeer — an anthology of pirate stories. Everyone should love pirate stories, particularly this one, which starts off with the most charming worldbuilding:

Lady Araminta was seen off from the docks at Chenstowe-on-Sea with great ceremony if not much affection by her assembled family. She departed in the company of not one but two maids, a hired eunuch swordsman, and an experienced professional chaperone with the Eye of Horus branded upon her forehead, to keep watch at night while the other two were closed.

Sad to say these precautions were not entirely unnecessary. Lady Araminta—the possessor of several other, more notable names besides, here omitted for discretion—had been caught twice trying to climb out her window, and once in her father’s library, reading a spellbook. On this last occasion she had fortunately been discovered by the butler, a reliable servant of fifteen years, so the matter was hushed up; but it had decided her fate.

… and gets more rollicking and whimsical from there.

Had to post a link to this interesting post by David Forbes about writing book proposals (linked by someone on Twitter, argh, can’t recall who). I’ve never tried to write a series — though I did think, once upon a time, that my first, now-abandoned novel might have been the first of three — and I’m always intrigued by hearing how series-writers conceive of their work. But I wanted to link to this post specifically because I finally found someone who writes even longer and more detailed outlines than I do! Forbes says:

My outlines usually run about 30 to 40 single spaced pages, with bullet points for each chapter detailing what happens, along with character sketches or other plot reminders.

That is seriously impressive. I think I have outline envy; mine are usually more like 10-15 pages.  (My first outline for Alcestis was 14 pages; my outline for Killingly, revised more than three times already, is 11.) But I outline for the same reasons Forbes does, which he describes as follows:

The outlines are pretty meaty, and I sweat out all of the little details in this form because it’s easier to figure out on page 28 of the outline that something is going really wrong than writing without an outline and getting to page 350 and realizing the same thing. I’m a plotty writer, so it’s easier to fix problems in the outline first. It also makes the writing of the actual book much easier, since most of the problems have already been solved. That’s not to say that other problems don’t crop up along the way, or characters need to change, or new ones need to be added (all of which happen), but I usually don’t have any big problems to deal with once I get started.

Notably, though, the post itself is primarily about writing book proposals — a task that even Forbes, with his detailed outlines, finds tiresome. It’s kind of a truism of any writing process, I think — the hardest thing to do is to sum up complex ideas (or a complex plot) briefly, without misrepresenting it, while not stripping away all the interesting parts. This is true of novels, dissertations, and people, since cover letters for jobs demand the same kind of performance.

Finding a good way to summarize the “hook” of your work is even harder. Here’s a great post from Justine Musk describing her own experience trying to refine a 1-2 sentence version of her story.

Malinda Lo and Maggie Stiefvater both posted entertaining and useful accounts of their own takes on New Year’s resolutions. I’m not much of a resolution-maker either, but lists of goals? Oh dear. I’ve been using Basecamp to manage my to-do lists since last summer,  and it now contains 11 separate lists, some of terrifying length. I also have a Moleskine planner that I consider my second brain. This is what happens when you’re working on a dissertation and a novel simultaneously.

I won’t bore you with my to-do lists, but I am going to steal Malinda Lo’s concept and write up a list of reading resolutions — books I really want to read in 2010. Some of these are on my TBR list at GoodReads, and some aren’t. And while I’m sure I’ll be reading lots of academic nonfiction in the next year, this list is about fiction, since fiction tends to languish on the shelf when I’m busy with academic work. I’m aiming for ten books, and like Malinda, I’ll blog about each one here after I’ve read it.

1. The Sealed Letter, Emma Donoghue
2. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (T. just reread this and convinced me to add it; I’m woefully lacking in exposure to Russian novels)
3. The Known World, Edward P. Jones
4. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
5. Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson (planning to read this with the Endicott Mythic Fiction group on GoodReads)
6. The Ambassadors, Henry James
7. The Golden Bowl, Henry James
8. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
9. The Children’s Book, A. S. Byatt
10. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins

Lots of historical fiction and literary thrillers, in preparation for writing Killingly, but also books I just plan to enjoy (the James, in particular, and the A. S. Byatt). One of my quasi-resolutions for the last year was to read more for pleasure, even when I felt like I didn’t have time — I tend to forget, when I’m really stressed, how much brighter life seems when I’m in the middle of a good book.

Any suggestions for books to add to this list?

A brief break from Alcestis today to talk about novel #2, the one that’s still a twinkle in my eye, as it were. I haven’t said much about it  here because I haven’t begun writing it yet — I’m keeping busy with the dissertation. I’ve researched and outlined it, and much as I wish I could be delving right into it, I’m also enjoying the process of collecting little bits of information related to 1890s America and to specific elements of the book — a sort of mental collage. (I’m also using Scrivener for the first time, since I’ve finally got a Mac laptop again. Not sure how well I’ll like it for actual writing, but it is great fun to make up loads of note cards.)

Yesterday, for example, I read a rather grim but also fascinating article in the Times, complete with not-actually-grisly slideshow, about the Windsor Hotel Fire in 1899. (See also this contemporary letter to the editor about the possible causes of the fire. I love that the Times finally took down the pay wall for old articles.) The bit that stuck with me was the mention of bricks from the collapsed building being reused:

Tens of thousands of those survive anonymously, reused on other building projects for rear or inner walls.

The notion of anonymously surviving bricks is sort of poetic — like buildings in England that still have bits of Tintern Abbey’s roof in them, or like the vanished slabs of marble from the sides of the Pyramids. Or, to use the comparison in the article itself, like the metal recovered from Ground Zero and recently used to build a new Navy ship — though that re-use is martial in a way the others aren’t. The main building at Mt. Holyoke burned down only a year before the events of my novel, but I don’t remember reading about whether or not any materials had been salvaged and used in the new dormitory buildings constructed afterward.

Today, via Holly Tucker on twitter, I found this article about “bachelor girls,” a subset of “New Women” who achieved financial independence but often had trouble finding suitable living situations as young unmarried ladies.

The more domesticated form of New Woman idealized at women’s colleges in the 1890s was the All Around Girl, described in another Times article from 1895, here:

There is no virtue of womanliness or of a strong, healthy nature that this typical American girl does not possess … . She realizes that upon her, individually as well as collectively, rests the duty of upholding all womanhood, and she is true to the trust.

No pressure or anything, ladies.

The all around girl was somewhat like a bachelor girl in her self-sufficiency, but societally safe — she was supposed to be independent, gregarious, charming, and intelligent, but not too serious about her studies, and all her talents were valued because they’d make her an excellent wife and mother.

There’s one all around girl in the novel-I-have-yet-to-write. Those of you who have read Alcestis will perhaps not be surprised to hear that she’s not one of the main characters. One of the main characters is based on a real girl; the other one’s my own, and like Alcestis, she tries to build a new life out of old bricks.

Another recommendation today, this time for a piece of journalism by Paige Williams: Finding Dolly Freed, a profile of the author of the 1970s alternative-living screed Possum Living (now being republished by Tin House).

Partly due to the continuing pseudonymity of her subject, Williams couldn’t find a magazine willing to buy this article, so she decided to print it herself. She cites Radiohead’s In Rainbows experiment as an inspiration; everyone on Twitter is calling it “indie journalism.” I’d call it one of the best profiles I’ve read lately (between this and Rebecca Skloot’s book, it’s been a good week for nonfiction!).

Also: I’ll testify that an appeal from an individual author can influence me in ways a larger publication can’t — I gave a donation for this article, but I read the Times magazine online every week. (Then again, if Williams wanted a donation every week, I might grow less willing to contribute, too.) It’s an interesting concept, and I’ll be curious to see how well it works for her.