Jennifer Egan: The answers were maddeningly absent

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Jennifer Egan

conquer-the-world inspiration views

Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

Jennifer Egan

levels reading writing

I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.

Jennifer Egan

flames life art

I wonder what Proust would have made of our present-day locus of collective fantasy, the Internet. I’m guessing he would have seized on its wistful aspect, pointing out gently and with wry humor that much of what beguiles us is the act of reaching for what isn’t there.

Jennifer Egan

proust guessing fantasy

Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer. Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young.

Jennifer Egan

technology two years

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

Jennifer Egan

nourishment reading interesting

I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.

Jennifer Egan

block writing thinking

I'm very interested in the way the Internet has changed teenage life. Obviously it's very different from when I grew up, when there weren't even answering machines, much less computers. I was telling my children this the other day, and the little one said, "Did you have electricity, Mom?" and I was like okay, enough, kid.

Jennifer Egan

teenage mom children

Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or... or what

Jennifer Egan

sometimes looks thinking

Redemption, transformation--God how she wanted these things. Every day, every minute. Didn't everyone?

Jennifer Egan

redemption transformation worry

I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.

Jennifer Egan

said forget sometimes

The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.

Jennifer Egan

music real song

There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.

Jennifer Egan

metaphor way

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

Jennifer Egan

intellectual ideas needs

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

Jennifer Egan

regularity stuff writing

I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, I'm going to ace this. It's just not who I am.

Jennifer Egan

aces who-i-am thinking

I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.

Jennifer Egan

work-out mean thinking

One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.

Jennifer Egan

trouble feelings writing

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

Jennifer Egan

effort lines firsts

That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

Jennifer Egan

opposites writing way

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.