And the fact that I could think through them, I could figure out what I was feeling or thinking by putting in motion a sort of fictional interaction.
I liked the idea of writing these dialogues. Normally, if you make any changes to nonfiction texts, it has to do with aesthetic considerations. But if you do it, you’re deceitfully changing things, because you’re changing things so that the story reads how you want it to read, but you’re not doing it in a transparent way. I realized why it’s satisfying when you’re a nonfiction writer, you can’t change things. Whiles’s class, and it was so satisfying. And I did the first dialogue, where I imagined Jay in Dr. I started thinking about dialogues, because I was thinking about Plato’s Republic, and Plato in general. It was hard during the pandemic, I was with my wife and kids all the time, and there was just no brain space to be able to think creatively about how this would end. And I knew that I needed to be alone in order to figure out what to do at the end. I had this self-funded writing residency, because it was during the pandemic, where we rented this house. There’s something so exciting about those final sections. And I was wondering, it’s such a sharp departure from the other sections of the book, which are much more matter-of-fact. There are lots of epistolary novels I feel like I see it less in nonfiction. I’m really curious how the end came together.
NYTIMES BOOK REVIEW HOW TO
When I sent it to my editor, structurally, it was all there, but the part that needed the most thought and work was the last part, figuring out how to make that work. That came on my own in the writing process. And then I realized, oh, I want this book to be in conversation with the allegory in a structural way. But it was only in that process of writing that I started to think through the idea of there being these four parts, like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I didn’t want to braid the stories, I wanted that feeling of interruption that existed in real life. Sally Howe accepted it on proposal, but then I had a year to get together the whole manuscript. And then he was really helpful trying to find editors who would like it too, which was also harder.ĭid your editor help shape the manuscript early-on, and what was that process like? He loved it for all the reasons that I like it. Matt was really the most enthusiastic about the Dr. There was a lot of interest with just the Jay story. At that point, I didn’t know how they were going to go together. In the interim, I sent out the first part that I had about Dr. I started looking for agents before the New York Times piece was published. I was not interested in doing a longer version of that. I think we could have easily sold a book that would have been more about Title IX, and this complication with me too, and a more nonfiction book that digs into those issues I felt were already explained in the article. After I wrote the story, there was a lot of interest in me just writing an expanded version. Whiles, I remembered feeling very similar in my body and in my head. I think it’s that feeling of being trapped by lies in a way that feels sort of scary and makes you doubt yourself. People say “gaslit,” though I’m annoyed how a word like gaslit simplifies an experience. I knew, during the experience of the Jay story, that I wanted them to be told together, because there was a visceral feeling I had during the Jay experience. Can we talk about going from essay to book? I feel like since you’ve got two stories here, it’s so much more nuanced and complex. It’s such a page-turner! It absolutely fits the bill as a literary thriller. But I worry that people are expecting a bigger version of that. I started calling it an article even though it was really an essay. I was joking with my friend Lina that The New York Times won’t let you call it an essay. And I think because of having an article/essay first. Because I like my book! But I think my book might be different. I wouldn’t feel bad about myself I don’t think it’s my fault. And so I’m worried about people basically being dissatisfied customers. I think I have anxiety about it being read not the way that I hope it would be read, of it being a mismatch, and how it’s marketed versus what I think it is. But I don’t know if it’s really suited to my personality.ĭo you have anxiety around the book launch? I just wanted to drop mine into a black hole somewhere. But there’s a lot of lead up, right? There’s a whole process to it, which is a good thing. And so then this is the opposite because it’s a lot. I really liked working with the press, but it didn’t get out in time to be reviewed, so there was no publicity. It’s almost like having a first book, because my first book was a collection. It’s so exciting to see the buzz about it. Tell me about the experience of publishing To Name the Bigger Lie.
0 kommentar(er)
