American - Author | July 19, 1960 -
I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.
Ethan Canin
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I started out writing stories because that's all I wanted to read, but now I don't know if I'll ever write one again.
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A ten- or twelve-page story seems too easy, which is a funny thing to say considering that writing a decent short story is devastatingly difficult. Yet it still seems easier than a novel. You can turn a short story on a single good line - ten pages of decent writing and one good moment.
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You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.
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The only successful way to write, and the only one I have found, is to be the character. Give up on trying to control them. Writers always talk about hearing voices. That's what they mean.
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My idea of teaching literature is just to read great passages aloud or to look at it the way a writer does, which is what I try to do. Which is to say, 'How does this writer do this? How did he order his scenes? Do you notice any pattern to his sentences?'
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I'm a craftsman type of teacher. I don't like the thematic type of teaching that takes place in a lot of colleges.
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I teach a 14-week semester, and one of the things I do when I have to teach literature is, for the first half hour of the class, I have the students write the beginning of a new story every week. At the end of the semester, even if they have learned nothing about literature, at least they'll have 14 beginnings that they can take with them.
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I finished 'America America,' and I knew I had to write another book, not just for personal reasons but because I had a contract.
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To me, point of view is everything.
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I read for the sensation of becoming another person; I write for the same sensation.
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As I write, I try to be the character.
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