author of You will not be free from this Lit Hub takes questionnaire
Rachel Aviv’s new book, You will not be free from this, Now Alfred A. Available from Knopf, so we asked him a few questions about writer’s block, writing routines, favorite books, and more.
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What was the first book you fell in love with?
There were a lot of YA novels that I fell in love with (everything by Katherine Paterson), but as an adult I think the first novel was by Richard Yates revolutionary Road. I haven’t read that book since college, and I guess it really wouldn’t be that old—I read all of Yates’s other books, hoping to get the same experience as I did revolutionary RoadBut it didn’t happen. However, at the age of twenty, I somehow realized that his description of a wedding in the 1950s explained to me everything about my high school/college relationship and basically my soul. I couldn’t work after reading this.
i interned in village voice The summer after college, and my boss was Ed Park, and he gave me amazing book recommendations. As an expression of my appreciation to him, I decided I had to give him my copy. revolutionary Road. But I was too embarrassed by all the notes I’d written in the margins (I remember one of them included some kind of feminist text about embroidered eggs on the wife’s apron), so I bought a new copy and pretended it was the one I already had, and I remembered she commented on how “neat” my copy was – she thought there was something wrong.
What book do you re-read?
Wants By Grace Paley. human relationships By Natalia Ginzburg. I have read most of Janet Malcolm’s books several times.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you do?
This used to be easy for me to answer: a psychologist. I took steps to apply to clinical psychology PhD programs for a few years. Now I’m upset to realize that maybe this isn’t the right backup plan anymore. Over the years, I’ve found that having deep, intense conversations with people is so mentally draining that it’s hard for me to imagine how I would maintain my sanity if I were to fit those six or seven conversations into a work day.
How do you deal with writer’s block?
I have made a kind of rule for myself regarding this. Sometimes I spend too much time writing and rewriting a particular paragraph or section and it seems like the work is going nowhere. I think I’ve gradually come to realize that the problem isn’t the language of that paragraph or section – I need to look at what’s coming immediately before that paragraph, because I’m trying to break down ideas into a paragraph or section in a way that isn’t enabling structure. Or maybe I don’t really know what I want to say. But the problem is not in the sentences.
It also has to do with the sad truth that the effort put into a piece of writing does not necessarily correlate with its quality. Sometimes the pieces I’ve put the most hours into writing are the weakest, because I was relying more on the writing to try to solve a bigger problem than the story itself.
What time of day do you write?
I am a morning person deep down. I think I have a different personality in the morning. I really wish I could spread that personality so it lasts for the rest of the day.
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You Won’t Get Free From This: Stories of Mothers and Daughters By Rachel Aviv Alfred A. Available from Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
