{"id":6339,"date":"2007-05-10T08:05:40","date_gmt":"2007-05-10T12:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=6339"},"modified":"2024-10-27T21:43:24","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T01:43:24","slug":"michael-chabon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=6339","title":{"rendered":"Michael Chabon: “He dumped the entire 660-page draft”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fascinating report from Elegant Variation<\/a> – who was there last night at the LAPL to hear him speak. I’m excited to read Chabon’s latest. This part really got to me:<\/p>\n

Was originally in first person but “the main character is a bigmouth … can’t shut up … a yenta,” which worked against his wish for a simpler, Chandleresque style … He dumped the entire 660-page draft (to gasps from the audience) … which “can be hard” … he “had a sick feeling while saying goodbye – but more often than not” his stomach guides him, pointing to what’s right … Can physically feel it in his stomach when the writing doesn’t work … <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

LIke John Irving completely rewriting his entire latest book – going WAY over his deadline – to the dismay of the publisher who had been waiting for it – changing the point of view completely. Like: he KNOWS his craft.<\/p>\n

This happened to Chabon before … and was the genesis of Wonder Boys<\/i> (and if you’ll remember – the novelist in that book has a hard time completing his novel) … Chabon’s debut novel Mysteries of Pittsburgh<\/i> was such a success, and Chabon was such a phenom – he was only 22 years old – and he started work on another book right away – and … it just … wasn’t working. He wrote and wrote and wrote – the thing was 1000 pages long. Years passed. Anyone who read Mysteries of Pittsburgh<\/i> and adored it will remember how long that waiting period was. I think it was 8 years or something like that? UnSPEAKable! Mitchell and I were both like: WHERE IS MICHAEL CHABON? WHERE IS HIS NEXT BOOK??? Apparently, he was sweating it out in the trenches – writing, re-writing – until finally: he threw the whole damn thing out. He knew when to cry “Uncle”. The damn thing was not working. He gave it his best shot. But he was done working on it. And began to write another book entirely, not the one he had promised his publisher, years had now gone by … but out with the old draft of the book – and he wrote the entirety of Wonder Boys<\/i> at breakneck speed.<\/p>\n

It’s so inspirational to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating report from Elegant Variation – who was there last night at the LAPL to hear him speak. I’m excited to read Chabon’s latest. This part really got to me: Was originally in first person but “the main character … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[227,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6339"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22086,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6339\/revisions\/22086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}