Letting Characters Decide

 

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting regional author Alice McDermott several times over the years at various book festivals and literary events. During one of those events, she explained that although she writes fiction, she bases her fiction on experience. 

“Writers like to say that they write from their imagination because that sounds harder,” she said. She’s not literally writing about herself or her family, but she is writing from her experience, observations, and the world she knows. “Our thoughts come from our experience. The way we use words is part of our experience.”

McDermott said that she never writes from an outline or with a set destination in mind. She writes from the hearts and minds of her characters and allows them and their relationships to evolve and drive the story. “If I’m not surprised by what my characters are doing, I stop writing.”

An emotive writer approaches writing like a reader, wanting to be surprised. McDermott’s characters make choices based on who they are; the choices are not made by her as the author. She compares this method to the great clockmaker theory: the author creates the world and then leaves it up to the created to determine their destiny. But once it’s set in motion, the characters have to follow the established rules.

“When writing fiction, you’re constantly eliminating choices. As soon as you’ve written that first sentence, you’ve eliminated a million choices. Each sentence eliminates more.”

Alice McDermott has won the National Book Award and has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. Her characters seem to be making good choices for her.

Learn more about Alice McDermott and her books at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7505.Alice_McDermott

Lit and Art at Baltimore Book Fest

It’s that season again—time for the Baltimore Book Festival. It’s the Mid-Atlantic Region’s biggest literary celebration! The event takes place from Friday, September 26 at noon to Sunday, September 28 at 6 p.m.

Once again, the Lit and Art Reading Series has a place at the Baltimore Book Festival’s CityLit Stage—the hottest stage of the festival! Our program takes place at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 26 and features Tom Glenn, Eric D. Goodman, Holly Morse-Ellington, Nitin Jagdish, Nathan Leslie, Liz Moser, and Manzar of the Watermark Gallery. The event will be emceed by NPR’s Aaron Henkin, whose program “The Signal” takes listeners on a weekly tour of Baltimore’s cultural landscape.

Other featured writers participating in this year’s festival include Alice McDermott, Rafael Alvarez, Jessica Anya Blau, Sid Gold, Jen Michalski, Lalita Noronha, and a multitude of others.

Learn more about this year’s Baltimore Book Festival at www.baltimorebookfestival.org.

Go right to the CityLit Stage!

www.baltimorebookfestival.org/schedule/location/3/CityLit-Stage

Celebrate Books Capitol Style

The National Book Festival in Washington DC is early this year! This weekend, join lit lovers from across the nation on the National Mall for the 2014 Library of Congress National Book Festival. The celebration takes place on this Friday, August 29.

Featured authors and poets include E.L. Doctorow, Claire Messud, Alice McDermott, Lisa See, Billy Collins, and Baltimore’s own Elisabeth Dahl, a previous featured author at the Lit and Art Reading Series.  

This year there are even special evening events on movie adaptations, poetry, graphic novels, and Mexican literary legends.

Learn more and get the full schedule at the Library of Congress website.

http://www.loc.gov/bookfest

Alice McDermott's Happy Ending

“I’ve always wanted to write happy endings and my characters always deny them.” That’s what Alice McDermott said when talking to writers about the craft of novel writing a few years ago.

“Happy endings — any endings — can’t feel fake or made-up.” Astute readers just won’t buy it. A novelist must be true to the world created in a novel.

“Once you start that world spinning, you must exist within it. There is room for surprises, but they have to be believable surprises.”

Often, the writer is as surprised by an outcome of a story or novel as the reader. That comes from getting to the truth of the story instead of forcing a happy ending.

One of McDermott’s most popular novels, Charming Billy, has found its own happy ending by becoming the first of her novels to be adapted for the stage. (Or perhaps this is only the beginning!)

The world premiere of Charming Billy took place at Round House Theater this past weekend. It’s been held over and you can still get tickets for showings through February 27.

Visit the Round House Theater website for more information.
www.roundhousetheatre.org/performance/charming-billy

F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference Honors Alice McDermott

The 15th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference will honor Alice McDermott on Oct. 16, 2010.

Alice McDermott is one of the most highly regarded writers in contemporary literature. Her second novel, That Night (1987), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In his cover review for The New York Times Book Review, David Leavitt called That Night “an original, a work that revels in a rich, discursive prose style that belongs entirely to Alice McDermott.”

She received the National Book Award for her fourth novel, Charming Billy (1998), which the Roundhouse Theater in Bethesda is adapting Charming Billy for the stage to open in February 2011. Her recent novel, After This (2006), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In recent years, McDermott’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker.

Come meet Alice McDermott at this weekend’s conference. For more information, visit the conference website.

http://fscottfitzgerald.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/75/