Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
Interpretation
Writing can feel isolating, but the choice to write longer forms reflects a desire for deeper connection.
In this quote, Alice McDermott reflects on the often solitary experience of publishing short stories, where the response can feel nonexistent or muted. This sentiment may influence her preference for writing novels, which allow for more complexity and the potential for greater engagement with readers, challenging the isolation inherent in short storytelling.
In practice
In a workshop about the writing process, one might use this quote to discuss the emotional challenges writers face.
My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now--to be given, not merely to be sought and returned.
We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit--the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness.
The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.
When I write in Italian - this is just the metaphor that came to me immediately, and I really think this is what it is - I feel like I'm writing with my left hand. Because of that weakness, there is this enormous freedom that comes with it.
I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.
I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.
For me, style is about quality, integrity and timelessness. It is free of trends but always feels fresh and new.
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