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Dead Guy Interviews - John Steinbeck |
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I recently spent some time with Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner John Steinbeck. Here’s what he had to say about writing:
Greg - John, what is your advice to writers?
John - Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don’t know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.
Greg: The ol’ butt to chair concept, eh? Please go on.
John: If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by on means always, find a way to do it.
Greg: Anything else?
John: It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death.
Greg: John Steinbeck, scared? Tell me it isn’t so.
John: It’s so.
Greg: I asked you not to tell me that.
John: I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.
Greg: Any final words, you Nobel Prize winner you?
John: I remember one last piece of advice given to me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic ‘20s, and I was going out into the world to try and be a writer. I was told, “It’s going to take a long time." It has taken a long time—a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never gotten easier.
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“Great presentation by Greg Trine! Children and adults were fascinated by his unique journey of becoming an author...Greg's entertaining yet realistic account of becoming an author inspired all of us to read and write just for the sheer joy of it!” Nancy Thorne 6th grade teacher, Hawthorne Elementary School
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