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| 50 Book Pledge | Book #42: Canada by Richard Ford |
Question: How do you begin working on a new book?
Margaret Atwood: Okay, where does a book come from? People have been thinking about that for a long time. How do you begin? How do you get into it? I would say that if you’re not finding this happens somewhat spontaneously, you probably shouldn’t be doing this activity. I mean, a lot of people say, “I want to be a writer.” And you say, “Well, what do you want to write?” And they say, “I don’t know.”So for me, I think it’s not a question of sitting around wondering what I’m going to write. It’s a question of sitting around wondering which of the far-fetched and absurd ideas I’m going to try to tackle. Sometimes, I think I should be a lot safer and less risk-taking and stick to somebody, or something, a little bit more manageable.
But those aren’t the things that appeal to me, unfortunately. I wish I had a formula, I wish I had a way of preceding that would be kind of, you know, this is what Chapter One is always like, and this is what Chapter Two is always like. But it isn’t. I just have to plunge into it. And it’s usually the one… that the voice of sanity and reason is telling me not to write. It’s usually that one that I end up writing.
