"For me the idea of writing not for publication is a little like drinking alone. To me, drinking is sort of a social experience. [Writing] is like coming home from a great trip and sitting around a dinner table and saying, I've got to tell you about this."
--Susan Orlean in Newsweek in a writers' roundtable also featuring Lawrence Block, Elizabeth Strout, Robert Caro, Annette Gordon-Reed and Kurt Andersen.
2 days ago
2 comments:
A moment of silence in honor of Susan Orlean's awesomeness . . .
*a beat*
My college writing professor, Robin Winks, always reminded his students that all writing is written for an audience. As obvious as that sounds, up until that time I had never really thought of it that way. Somebody like J.D. Salinger is writing for an audience, whether he would admit it or not; I suppose we won't know for certain who that audience is until they are published.
Even after a piece of writing is published we still can't know for sure who its audience is. Maybe Salinger's one true reader has been dead since 1965 and he doesn't see the point in publishing in his or her absence.
Orlean is great, and seems to be in edits on a new book right now.
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