#497: Joyce Carol Oates — A Writing Icon on Creative Process and Creative Living

Well hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job, my privilege to attempt to deconstruct world class performers from all different fields. My guest today is a writing Icon Joyce Carol Oates.

Joyce Carroll Oates is the author of novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers, We Were the Mulvaney's, Blonde, and A Widow's Story. Among her many honors are the National Book Award, the Pan America Award, the National Humanities Medal, the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and the 2020 Sino Del Duca World Prize for Literature. Oates is the Roger S. Berlin Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since nineteen seventy eight. So that is the approved Bio. There are a few other things I would like to say though, because I think Joyce

Certainly. Is prone. to understandably understating Her prodigious Talents. She has published and again, this is getting into semi non fact check territory, but I think I do have most of these right. She has published around sixty novels.

Not to mention all the other formats and genres. She is so prolific that In her Wikipedia entry, there is a separate entry just for her bibliography, to give you an idea. So Joyce Carroll Oates Bibliography is its own gigantic page. Her first book was published in nineteen sixty three. And I have read at least from two sources

That On average, she has had two pieces of her work published per year since. Just let that sink in. Three of her novels and two short story collections. If I'm getting it right, we're all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. And

Her work is incredible. Just an endlessly impressive woman. Endlessly impressive human, endlessly impressive writer and teacher. And with all that preamble. Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with

Choice. Carol. Oats. One very quick note. We had some Wi-Fi connectivity issues for the first ten minutes or so, so please bear.

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Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run fly out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also your personal question. Now it is seen. I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscalet. Me Joyce welcome to the show.

I wanted to start with A name that will be familiar and that's Jonathan Saffron Four. Former student of yours, now a colleague of yours. Who also happened to be in my same class, I believe, of the class of ninety nine at Princeton as an undergrad, and you wrote him a letter.

Perhaps his parents at some point, but the way that he recalls it, there's a specific line that I wanted to to ask you about, and we can take it any direction you would like. And the line is this, quote, You appear to have very strong and promising talent coupled with that most important of writerly qualities, comma, energy. Yeah. And he then later has come to strongly agree with that.

And man, is she right, energy is the most important writerly quality. Could you expand on uh what you mean by that? I think it's sort of self evident that we need a good deal of energy to be creator. We need a good deal of uh spirit and kind of optimism. I think of it as

Kind of um positive delusions or illusions about The worth of what we're doing. I was reading a biography of Walker Evans, this very distinguished early twentieth century. Photographer. And Walker Evans just makes the point that he would be asked like why is he doing this?

Who's his audience? And he he said that he wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of the pleasure of the camera. And seeing where it led him. And I think that's true of all created effort. That there's a kind of

Spirit or like a flame. It leads us somewhere to tell the story. It could be on. Entire novel to Pay not. A painting of something extraordinary that's never been done before.

And beh beyond that is just the uh the feel. That is the sheer pleasure in creativity, which is energy. And the opposite of that I think is being interrupted many times. In situations um Professional or familial?

Where one is interrupted and one's energy is drained off in different directions. So that we don't have the concentration that we need. That is really the great enemy of creativity. If we're looking at Maybe enemy is is would wouldn't be the right label in the way that I'm gonna use it, but

obstacles as some would-be writers perceive them. I'd like to speak to getting started. So a a writer friend of yours, I think with the Initials L M. Uh you described as having remarked that she'd like to be married and not get married. Uh and in other words Uh and I'll I'll take some liberty here, but not to find the perimeter, the parameters

go through the growing pains of those first few years, but to be sort of settled in the existence of being married and you likened that to Creative projects. And writing How do you

overcome the the difficulties Or advise that students overcome the difficulties in starting A given writing project. You could choose the genre. Well, I think we're all very different. Some people have a good deal of energy and excitement in the beginning.

And they can stay up all night long and working on a novel. No, writing a complete short story. I think as we get older we we we sort of We guard our energy differently. We don't quite stay we don't want to stay up all night working. But parcel it out in a more reasonable way.

So it does depend upon Who the person is. I have I have writing students who have a good deal of energy. But I have others who have been working on one one project for some time and so they're kind of focusing their energy.

But as I said, the one the great adversary is being interrupted and distracted. So distraction is our main Adversary right now. I think in In contemporary America. In the world of the internet.

And cell phones. At the moment we have a kind of toxic political situation that's very dreadful. Of goodwill. So all these distractions make it difficult to concentrate. When you look back at your own creative process, I've I've read I don't know if it was in the Paris Review, it could have been or elsewhere.

uh this series called The Art of Fiction. That you Need the title and I want to say last line. before you begin writing? Was that true or Is there any truth to that? Was there at at some point?

Oh yes. I need to s I need to see the ending of the Nabal. I need to see it in a kind of cinematic way. To sort of envision it. And then I

I usually have some words to go with that. And I really need a beginning and an end and I need a title. The title is what brings it all together. It's sort of like a A triangular Shape.

So the title will give you a sense of what The totality is The beginning obviously is the precipitating factor. Of the story. Should be in the first

Line. And then everything is a consequence of that. And then the ending is the ending. Which has been we're moving toward that ending. If we're on page nineteen or ninety nine or

One hundred ninety nine you're moving. Toward that inexorable ending. So you have a destination. That is an ideal way of writing. It may not be possible for everybody.

Some people like EL Doctora, my friend. And doctoral, he said that he never knew How his novels were going to end? He felt it was like a car trip. He was He was driving along a road, he didn't really know where he was going.

But I'm not like that. How much do you think about structure? So if you have the beginning and the end. And the title, even if it's A placeholder. I guess two questions. Do the titles Often change.

after you've sort of decided upon what you think it might be. And then the the second is How do you think about Or how much do you think about the structure once you have those initial Points in place.

The title could Definitely be changed. It would probably be an equivalent title. Something that was the same tone. And the same symbolism, but maybe it could be a different word. I have changed titles a few times.

Ideally, if you have the title first Then you have a you have a vision. So until you work out the picture of a long work. It's not a good idea to begin a However, I have begun and I have made mistakes that I had to correct as I went on.

So Much of writing, like all art, I think is exploratory. We don't always know what we're going to do. But ideally if you have an outline and a sense of where you're going, it's much easier. I spent a lot of time running and walking.

Every day I go walking or I love to run. And When I'm running, I think of my writing in structural terms. Have a spatial sense.

So if I don't go running every day My writing doesn't work as well. It really depends upon this kinetic Release an energy. Could you speak more to That

I is it an active thinking about or considering of the writing or is it Moving the body and letting Thematically. loosely, let's just say in in the case of structure.

pointed consciousness just kind of bubble up in the process of movement. Could you could you just speak to running and walking because I know it is a seems to have been a huge part of your life. What about you? Are you a runner? Uh I used to run. I used to run. I do a lot of walking. So I walk and swim and bike. I try to walk at least a few hours a day.

So I walk a lot. Yeah, that's the same. There's a hill new I live in a semi rural area. There's a hill near

Where I live a country road at the top of the hill. I've gotten so many ideas. I ran over there. It must have about That's about a mile or maybe mile and a half. So

It's like Waiting for me on top of that hill will be some idea. Now that's obviously a mystical superstitious notion on my part. Yet it seems to happen quite often. So if I'm stuck on a

Trying to work out a plot at my desk. I'm sitting right now at my desk. I really can't. Work it out here. I have to go somewhere else. Preferably up the baby out here all And I need to be alone with my thoughts.

Let's talk about Uh Once you have set foot into this exploratory process of writing. Even if you have some uh

landmarks laid out ahead of time. Let's just say the beginning. And the end. Actually, before I hop to that, I'm gonna ask you about revision. But when you say you have an idea of where it ends or you know the ending, Is it Uh just a

A concept? Is it finished prose? Is it a finished? Is it a paragraph? What what does knowing the end? look like concretely. It's pretty definite. It's like knowing you get in your car and you're going to drive to San Francisco and you you want to go to San Francisco, you don't want to wind up in Salt Lake City.

Or, you know, so somewhere in Montana, you're sort of aiming your vehicle for a destination. So It's just sensible. To plan that ahead of time. If we look at Then charting

This path. And Going from point A. beginning to ultimately Z the end. San Francisco, like you said. Uh when you have An initial

draft. Uh I've read that you're strongly in favor This is quote strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is or certainly should be an art. Yeah. How do you describe the revision process to students.

Well, I think a revision is so much fun. It's so exciting. To me the first draft is like material. And then the second draft. The revision. Is my

My use of that material? Mm-hmm. And so Subsequent revision. I revised all the time. I'm revising a novel now. I don't even know how many times I've gone through it. I tend to write the first chapters over and over and over again.

And the second chapter's over again. Then as I go on in the novel, I get more momentum, so I'm going forward a little more fluently. But yet when I come to My desk in the morning. I definitely always revise what I did the day before. And then I get a little momentum moving forward again. But the revision is really like ninety nine percent.

Of art, I think. There have been very few Artists. Who don't revis or

They may do several variants of the same scene. And apart from a real um A very small number of composers just could compose sort of in their heads like Mozart. And I guess Chopin sometimes, but then Chopin would work on what he had, he would he would work on it anyway and revise it. But I think Mozart was probably the most spontaneous creator.

But almost nobody's like that. I mean Beethoven worked very hard. Revising and Just about everybody that I've ever heard of. Let's speak to

The Revision. Process. I would love to hear in more specifics if you're able. what you're looking for, what you're looking to take out when you revise, and it and it is, I'm sure, second nature at this point to the extent that maybe it's hard to describe, but I'll I'll give an example

uh some authors or writers look to Say first and foremost, remove anything that is confusing. Could that could be confusing, right? Or that is unclear that or they ask proofreaders to help them and ask them to indicate, you know, if they had to cut ten percent or twenty percent, what they would cut. That's involving other people, but in your case, when you sit down To revise.

Could you walk us through any of the lenses you use to look at that? draft or the questions you ask yourself as you're going through. Is there any uh any level of specifics that you might be able to offer? Well, it does it does depend upon the manuscript. For instance, if I'm working in a a gothic mode or a surreal mode.

It's a different voice from sociological realism. Sometimes sometimes my writing is Social realism. And everything in the novel Is authentic. It is it really happened in some way. If you go to that city, you can walk around

And see those streets. There's a certain pleasure in that Ver similitud. Of the actual world. James Joyce.

Who was in many ways a surrealist writer. None the less. He believed in in the s the beauty and sanctity of of the of the actual So that

one can walk in Dublin and sort of walk through the you know, the day of Ulysses. And that's one way of writing. There's a poetry in realism. There's a beauty in just in things as they are. However, we have of our Maybe more than half of our lives I spent.

In dreams and And the unconscious. So that's a surreal Landscape. Every night we sleep and The

Perimeters Of realism are dissolved, you know, with great Great. Uh extravagant energy, I think and All sorts of Images and

improbable things sweep into our minds when we're when we're dreaming. So I like to write in a surreal mode too. And if I'm revising Book of fiction that's surreal. I consider that so very exciting because each time I sit down to write or to revise. I will get Some

golding some nudging, some hints. Something surfacing from the unconscious. So that a sentence that may be relatively simple By the time I revised it might it might be a whole a full page long. Because something else is

It's pushing at it. We're pulling at it. It's like an octopus with many, many uh legs or limbs or Our I'm sorry. Anyway, the the pull of the unconscious, I think, is very powerful.

And the more we can let that feel what we're doing. The more potent it is, also the more enjoyable for the writer. Jumping back to Jonathan, Saffron Fower for a moment. But it's on a website called identity theory. It probably appears elsewhere. But he mentioned that you gave him

A Reading list. And I I don't expect you to be able to r remember. Uh necessarily the exact

books or pieces of work that you recommended that he read, but do you have any recollection of how you chose what you did? Well, as I remember when Jonathan was very young, he may have just a better freshman at At Princeton. He was already an experimental Writer and artists. As you probably know his first book was just

Joseph Cornell Compendium. Which he he brought together, which is most unusual for a young person. To bring together work by By older people. Most young writers write their first novel, which is very autobiographical.

But Jonathan did not do that. He he went in a slightly different way. So I saw in him an experimental Personality. And I like that myself. But most young writers should not be experimenting.

They should just write what they wanna write. They may wanna write about their parents. They may want to write about their girlfriend or boyfriend and something in the first person that's funny. No, that's droll or witty. They may want to write some satire. But by no means should they try to be experimental because they're not ready for it.

Whereas Jonathan, I think, was never really that interested. In replicating The actual world. He was more interested in experimenting. With the medium of writing which is words.

Now I know that later on he has written much more realistic He's done autobiographical work. He's written pretty Transparently, I think about his own life and about His marriage and family life.

So I mean he has done it different kinds of writing. But because he had an experimental personality I probably gave him some I probably gave him Kafka to read. I don't remember exactly What it would have been.

Mm. I want to stick with Jonathan's just one more question and then move into some different areas. But Jonathan also mentioned and I'm paraphrasing here that You were the first person Two. Take him seriously.

And That you recognized there was such a thing as his writing, his work, so to speak, right? That he had a a work, a body of work in development that that had never occurred to him. When did you personally

First. Have that. Feeling. About Your own writing.

All about my own writing? By your own writing. No, I probably never had that feeling. I did have teachers who single me out. said very nice things to me. And I had a professor at Syracuse who even wrote a letter to my parents And because he did that, I did that.

For Jonathan also. I always remember that It was a very short, beautiful letter just that Joyce is a born writer. And she should be encouraged. I can't remember The girls of it. And I don't know if the letter even exists anymore.

I hope it's somewhere. So I thought that I would do that, you know, and when Jonathan came along, I wrote to his I wrote to his parents. Now I don't remember exactly what I said, but Mimic that original letter. So maybe Jonathan will write a letter, or has written. Maybe it's just something we should a tradition we should Carry on, but not overdo.

So I don't I have not actually done it since. Just one. It's quite a quite an honor to bestow upon Jonathan. He's he's a he's a very skilled writer. Yeah. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by ShipStation.

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Yeah. As I understand it, your and please correct me if I'm if I'm getting the details here wrong, but your first Book. was published in nineteen sixty three. By the North Gate, which was a collection of short stories.

Was that impactful or important to you or was just the active writing and the fact that you are so continuously writing more engaging, more important than that type of milestone. Would be for

Many Writers. How how did that affect you, if it if at all? Oh, of course, it was very profound. I was just a very young writer. I had had a number of stories of the best American short stories.

And the old Henry Awards. So I had been published in magazines and then some of the stories were anthologized. So the next step would be a book and it I don't know, I was about twenty two years old, I think.

When I received notice That My manuscripts have been accepted. So I called my husband at the time, Ray Smith. And told him about this.

He was at University And I was at home. And I was absolutely Disbelieving. I mean, I was so happy. It was

I was overwhelmed. I could hardly believe it. And it was a it was of course a milestone. It's tremendously Encouraging. I had

been encouraged earlier. In preceding years by various uh publications or winning an award or something. So I've had been encouraged. So I try to encourage younger writers to

I've endowed a number of awards, fiction awards at different universities for young writers. How do you Encourage young writers In your classroom. And that might sound like a strange question, but

You've had a lot of trial and error, or maybe just lots of trial. I don't know, maybe it's mostly success. You you've certainly been able to, I'm sure, test a lot of things in the classroom. You've been able to see what students go on to do or how they gravitate to the craft of writing or not. What if you fail most important or impactful in terms of

cultivating and encouraging. Young writers. Most writers who are in my workshop have already been writing for a while. Especially at NYU, they're graduate writers. Graduate student.

Yeah. So they know what they're doing and they have a project and they have their own stories. Based on your own lives. Experience, imagination. So I I'm a good reader. I mean I'm a sympathetic reader. An editor for what they're writing.

I don't tell them what the rate We have a workshop situation where everybody critiques A submission for the day. Everyone has an opinion. We have a conversation. So it really isn't just a professor. I have opinion. And everybody else does too.

So that a writer, young writer might feel well They liked what I wrote, but they didn't quite understand it. Or they thought It should be longer. Or they thought it was too long. It's a kind of consensus of editorial suggestions.

In a typical writing workshop. I I mainly see my role as being a very sympathetic and careful reader. What does it mean to be as sympathetic? Reader. Well I'm not I'm not critical or judgmental.

I'm on the side of the writer. I want to see what they've done. I mean in other in other years, like in the decades past There were male professors who told women writers That their subject matter wasn't literary. I mean even

And of well known women writers who went on. To become famous and win the Pulitzer Prize, they They were discouraged by their by some of these Remarks. I would never think it and I would never say those things.

I don't consider anything that subject. For fiction if it's treated if it's treated well. I try to get writers to write about what they really care about. I read a a beautiful line from you describing certain aspect of your creative process, and that is this is from the the Parish Review. Art of Fiction number seventy two.

One must be pitiless about this matter of mood. In a sense the writing will create the mood, and you continue to say Later in that same paragraph, I force myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes, and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Could you ex expand on any of this? I mean, I think it's it's pretty well put, but I know that there are a lot of people who feel they need to get themselves into the mood to write is there Anything else you

Could add to this? No, I I definitely feel that you create your mood by by working. And I have a sort of work ethic. I come from the a part of the world where people did work rather than just talk about it. And so if you feel

That you just can't write or you're too tired or this, that, and the other. Just stop thinking about it and go and work. I mean it's Life doesn't have to be so overthought. We don't have to wait to be inspired.

Just s start working. Uh particularly we I think first go for our long run and a l nice walk. And think about what you're gonna do. Come home and start working. But try not to be interrupted. That's that's the problem. Most people are living in families or they're living with a partner and the other person has a schedule and expectations.

And while you may love your family They can be the ones who drain your energy. For women that's always been a problem. Women Uh

Nurturing There's nothing wrong with that. W but women find it very hard to say no. Uh, women writers are always being asked to do things pro bono. To volunteer their time to do different things.

You know, to read manuscripts and to be on committees and so forth. And the instinct is really to say yes. And I I say yes to lots of these things. But it's really if you are uh careful. Custodian of your own time, like Philip Roth. For instance, or floor bearer.

You would never give away a whole lot of your time. But Philip Roth would never He wouldn't do one one hundredth of the things that I do. He was too smart. He knew how to take care of his To guard his own privacy.

Do you tend to work on multiple projects at a time or when you're immersed I've heard you describe uh being immersed in a project and as soon as you finish a novel you get assaulted by all of these new ideas. Do you ever work on multiple projects at the same time? No, I usually focus on my energy on one project. But I'm when working on a novel right now. But I'm taking a little time off to write a review.

Of a biography for the TLS. And I'm also writing an introduction to A new edition of Dostoevsky's short stories. So I'm taking time off from the novel. And then if I'm doing copy editing for

I've been going through a copy edited manuscript for another book that's coming out. I'll take You know, a week off. from my novel to work on that. Part of the reason I I ask is I

Came across comment in the Guardian and and this is not only in the Guardian, this is um Certainly something I've come across. And that is

Something along the lines in different places, the quote, I don't have any anxiety about writing. Not really. You know, it's such a pleasure and our lives are so relatively easy compared to people who are really out there in the world working hard and suffering. That's from The Guardian. Could you speak more to that? Again, I know it's like self evident on one hand, but also an uncommon contrast to a lot of lamentations and descriptions of anxiety around writing by other people. difficulties writing, writer's block, et cetera. Could you expand on

Not having anxiety. Around writing. Well, I just don't have it. Uh if I did, I I well don't think I would want to be a writer. I would have I would have tremendous anxiety if I were a performing artist, like a pianist. And I had to give a recital.

I would be overwhelmed with anxiety. Well at least I think I would be, I suppose. By practicing every day by By playing, you know. three, four hours every day you get to a point where the technique is just uh totally

totally internalized and you don't have to think about it. And I would be anxious if I were an athlete. You know, competing with other athletes. Right in In real time with people watching, you know.

I would find that in in immensely anxiety provoking. But writing or Or painting or drawing and these These arts are done on our own time. You can take as long as you want.

Nobody's watching you. Nobody cares either. It's a very different medium. As I said, I I find it Anxiety

Producing to even imagine playing piano in front of An audience. I did that once. I I was a I took piano lessons for quite a while. For about eleven years and I was playing

I would be the student who played the piano when the students marched into the assembly. And in my Middle school. And so I actually did this and it wasn't too bad. But being

On a stage performing. In front of people who know the music. I would just find that overwhelmingly terrifying. Is it the real time that's my dog barking in the background if

If you can hear that. Is is it the real time nature of that, the necessity to sort of deliver in front of an audience in real time versus being able to necessarily paying attention or caring. Is that the largest distinction between those two?

Oh yes, but some some pages on my novels I've rewritten so many times. So there would not be any one time. that anyone could watch anything like that, you know. I think when Really good professional

Musicians are playing. The probably Replicating what what they've done before. I know actors. Almost ex exactly and precisely do the same.

The same performance night after night. So they've sort of it's internalized in their brains and they just have to go through it. Another time. But with writing. Every time I

Every time I look at a page I can revise a There there has to come an end to this. Eventually you just have to stop doing it, you know. But in theory, James Joyce could still be working on Ulysses in Finnegan's wake. Because he was like that. He was experimental.

And every morning you wake up with some new ideas and you could write You could write another another novel, the whole different Novel would come out of your m your mood that morning. But we can't allow ourselves to do that. That's just uh too fantastical.

How do you decide when something is done or when you need to stop? Because you could just continue otherwise indefinitely. I try to use common sense. I'm going through a novel now that I've gone through probably ten times. It's in the computer, so I I I go through or scroll through it.

And I'm still changing it and changing sentences. I'm taking out paragraphs, I'm moving things around. But this has got to be the last time'cause the novel's coming out in August. So the time is left. I've been working at it for a year off and on.

And it has Metamorphose quite a bit. From the beginning. The main structure was always there and the main characters, but the sentences The sentences always change.

But I'll be done with that by Monday. So then I'll send that to my My editor and I'm not gonna change that. Anymore. Looking at

Ten tips of yourself. For writing. I believe these were originally tweets at one point. It's uh I mentioned a list of ten. I want to ask about

And if any of these are incorrect, please correct me. Number one is write your heart out. Number four Is keep in mind Oscar Wilde, quote, a little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. And then it goes on, but uh could you Explain why

The Oscar Wilde quote. About sincerity. Well, He's being funny. I think he's recoiling against the kind of Deadpan, overwhelming, boring.

Rect the two that one And counted in the Victorian world where literature was seen as a vessel for ethics and for morality. So it's a lot of preaching. There used to be a good deal of preaching. And

Didacticism. In prose fiction. And he was probably relating to that. So that kind of sincerity is just It's just very boring. I mean one doesn't want to hear Much of that. Uh literature should be interesting. It should I think it should be dramatic and characters

Should be colorful and and unusual and Each sentence should be As original as possible. And then write your heart out is something that Brunan Bernon Malam had said. I'm really quoting him.

It's just right, you know, right and right and right. I don't Don't hold that. So Joyce, I would love to ask you about a few more of these and then we we can move on. Uh the number three in this this top ten list is you're writing for your contemporaries and not for posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become posterity. Could you expand on that, please? This is probably aimed for people who were English majors and who were

Reading the great classics, you know, if you're reading Paradise Lost or Great place of Shakespeare. or a middle march or Ulysses, you're overwhelmed. Those audiences also no longer exist. So

You're writing for your own time, you're writing for your own generation, usually. Maybe people a little older than you are and then people younger than you are. But basically The audience that that revered Paradise Loss is long gone. So

This probably doesn't even have to be told to people in in New York. Twenty. Twenty one. That's mainly it. That you're writing for your own time. Sometimes people are writing to impress a parent.

Sometimes People are trying to be outstanding and And distinguish to impress someone who's not even in living any longer. Could be a parent. You know, the people have many unconscious motives.

But there could there's can be impediments, and I think there's a natural voice. If you think back on Your own experiences as a writer. Are there any Impediments short lived or long lived.

That Come to mind for you? Well, I think it was a little self conscious in the beginning to write very freely and openly because my parents would read what I wrote. So I may have been a little inhibited, but I tried I definitely tried to overcome that or to ignore it.

Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to be a writer. But I did begin writing. Under different names. One name was J C Smith I had Marion Raymond Smith. So I used J C Smith.

as a name for a while, and then was J C Oates. Which not necessarily a woman. Kind of androgynous. Person. And finally just settled on Joyce Carol Oates. Though for a while I had a couple of pseudonyms, but they were women they were women's names.

And Why did you decide to use the s the pseudonyms? Was that to sort of Criticism directed at you? Was it a creative exercise? Did it give you

more liberty in your own mind to Push to the edges. What uh why why did you use those pseudonyms? The first pseudonym was Rosamond Smith. And I had probably been writing about twenty years. So I wanted to embark upon a new voice.

With a different focus. These were more Suspense novels. Rather like movies. Cinematic and In movement and structure.

Without without much exposition or background. Not as much description. Scene in a movie. Moving forward. These were totally different.

And so I just wanted An outlet for a sort of imaginative writing that wasn't so much in the mainstream or my con my usual writing. Conventional. Whatever my own writing is.

It's a little more mean. Maybe mainstream and this was more like Suspense. Psychological suspense snubbles. Number

Eight. on these t this this top ten list. This will be the last one, uh on the list that I'd love to hear. you expand on and it is don't try to anticipate an ideal reader or any reader. He she might exist, but is reading someone else. What does don't try to anticipate an ideal reader?

Well. I I think it's pretty self evident, just w there's an integrity to the work. You have to express the work. And You shouldn't be curtailing it or shaping it.

Two Impress some person. So when you write you do not have any reader in mind. It is really just a Creative.

Process for you. And you alone? Well, this the the work itself has its own integrity. You have to express the work. Each work is different.

I mean if you think of one novel of mine, they're all they're they're really quite different from one another. They're tonally different and the voice is Tend to be different. They're different in in each novel, so There'll be no way that I could be writing for one audience or I'm not I'm not really thinking of an audience.

Can you suggest any one novel, mine, that that you've read that You might have a particular question about like the tone or the The voice. 'Cause I can't think so much in in abstract terms. Sure. Yeah. No, it's it was more a question of of when you work on any given piece, if if you ever think of sort of who it is targeted towards not to necessarily curtail your creative

boundaries, so to speak. I just I I think of it in contrast to something I know I'm much more familiar with, which is nonfiction, fiction I I really have no experience with whatsoever, but in in the world of fiction, thinking about just as an example. what levels of expertise You assume in your audience, right? As a way of determining

How much terminology you need to explain or omit. Or include. to make it compelling. And I mean this this I guess just makes me think of say John McPhee writing about

geology, right? It'd be v it'd be very easy. To lose the reader. Depending on how close you zoom in on some of the the details.

Uh of something like that. So it was really a just a broader question. Now let me talk about that. You see you've just suggested A particular work. He wrote that for the New Yorker. He was working with William Shawn. who was an editor who wanted man many, many details and everything had to be very authentic. And the fact checking at the New Yorker is ex is famous, you know, they're very, very careful. So John McCree writing for the New Yorker, he would write a certain kind of Of work.

If you were working if you were writing for T V Guide, you know, or Time Magazine or the New York Times Book Review. Would have been very different. That's a good example in non fiction of aiming for a particular market. So John McPhee would be given like the whole issue of a

Of the New Yorker. For one of his long Nonfiction pieces. And it was tailored for that magazine. And then they all became books and

Some of John if he's Essays are really classics. I mean they're they're wonderful. So writing for the New Yorker for him was perfect. Somebody else maybe writing for you know, a pulp magazine and

One is criticized for having a complex sentence structure. But when John McFee was writing for The New Yorker And other people write for the New York or for the nonfiction. And I have written For the New Yorker. Reviews.

And essays. You definitely are aiming for a certain kind of reader. But that's a little different from fiction. Fiction is in its own world and it has its own voice. And

I don't usually think of there being a particular audience for fiction. How do you Give assignments or think about Giving assignments. Two students.

Well I can ditch in my drawer. Look at some of these assignments. I've always skipped an assignments to introductory writers. So I teach on different levels. I'm teaching advanced fiction. At Rutgers this semester.

And I taught in the graduate Writing program at NYU and they're all older students. But at Princeton sometimes I have taught Introductory writers. So I give them assignments.

They want to sign this. They're very happy to have a signals. And the and the assignments really work very well. I'll see if I can find some and just read some. Perfect. We have a textbook.

And so I assign stories for them to read. And for instance one One assignment is to write To introduce a character. To read a number of stories which I have assigned in an anthology.

Might be a story by Margaret Atwood, a story by James Doris, William Faulkner. And then to a right Um just a page where they're introducing a A character. And then at the end of the introduction they have the character say something. So that's not really a story. They don't have to worry.

They don't have to worry about writing a story. They're just doing something very basic. And then in another assignment, I have them write um A piece that's like a memoir, very short. It doesn't have to be a literal memoir. But it's like

A memoir, like something that happened. When I was six years old, when I was ten years old last week. Then another assignment which is very difficult for the students, and I I often don't give it unless I think the students are Or up to it. It's

A mimicry of pro style. First Example is to write A few pages in the style of Hemingway. And then write the same story again, the same material again.

In the style of Jack Karawak. And then finally in the style of H P Lovecraft. Now that's an assignment, as I said, I don't always give. Because it's demoralizing for some students. They just cannot do it. So I I I didn't give it recently.

I probably gave it a couple of years ago. When I have good students That's assignment's terrific. They really enjoy mimicking Hemingway and and writing a little Hemingway short story.

And they really enjoy Jack Carouac. And they find love craft very challenging. But it's sort of like With music. If you have gift

pianists who could give them assignments and they will do well. Others are just Hopeless and demoralized. So I try I try to measure the assignments according to the aptitude of the students.

But then one assignment that I always give the l the last assignment in the course will be to write a short story that turns upon moral decision. Some ethical or moral decision. In somebody's life. And they do very well with that.

Young people have a natural moral instinct and they're they're interested in morality. And they they want to know what's right and what's wrong. And I have other assignments too. I mean many, I have many different assignments. And well one of the I'm

I did recently at UC Burke. We read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. And instead of writing a critique of the story, I said, If you want to You can write a little story from the point of view of one of the character in the lottery. A minor character.

And so they did wonderfully with that. How much of your Writing. Have you for for lack of a better term, thrown away. Uh finished writing. Could be a short story, could be a poem, could be anything or never looked at.

Once you finished it. Unpublished. Uh I I'd I'd come across mention of I I believe you So s tucking away or getting rid of

a fair amount of at least your early work. Do you have any guess on or or commentary on on how much of your finished work. Never gets Shown to anyone else.

Well, now I probably publish everything that I do. When I was younger it had more material. Sometimes. I just didn't like something and I wouldn' Take it out of circulation. Now in the in the other room I could show you a huge stack of of short stories.

And those are stories that were published in magazines, but I never Gather them into a book. Those go back for years. And Maybe one or two of them even won some award, like the O Henry Award.

But I never felt That I really wanted to Put them into a A hard cover collection for one reason or another. I'm not sure why.

But there they are. There are many of them there. I mean about three hundred, four hundred pages. Or never do published. This is also a

A segue and uh really just have a handful of additional questions. I could keep going, but I think just a few more would be really fun for me. This leads to a question about productivity. Or it's really a question about a comment that I've read of yours on productivity, and that is productivity, quote, productivity is a relative matter and it's really insignificant. What is ultimately important is is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones, just as the young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one. Do you have any a additional comments on the relationship between

Volume. Uh writing and Enduring quality. Or if you want to take that question in a different direction, you could as well. But do you have any thoughts?

Uh thoughts to add to that? Well it's it's inevitable if a number of books Some books have come to seem traditionally more important than others. That is inevitable. If D H Lawrence wrote a good deal, he's

A brilliant short story writer. But probably only a few of his short stories tend to be ontologized. You know, over and over. Same with Faulkner. And with Hemingway too, Hemingway wrote many, many short stories. But you'll see the same

Two or three or four stories. Reprinted quite a bit. There are probably um Jane Austen novels that are, you know, Pride and Prejudice and Emma. And then you get to Mansfield Park. Not as many people would read that. Same with Shakespeare, measure for measure, just not as popular as Hamlet. It's not as important a play.

But it has wonderful things in it. Charles and Crescent is a f a very fascinating play. But if you're only going to teach two or three plays of Shakespeare, you would not be teaching Troilus and Crassada. You would be teaching Macbeth and Learn. And Hamlet and maybe Othello, those are the ones that come to the surface.

But the other place of Shakespeare, I mean every one of them, even Titus Andronicus. They have much to them. He is always a very remarkable Playwright. So if I've written fift novels Not all fifty novels are going to be admired by

By everyone or or by anyone. That's just not the way it is. So some things just seem to come to the surface. And maybe there's a perversity somebody might prefer Falkers.

The Hamlet to Faulkner's S the Sound and the Fury. Yeah. Prefer Sanctuary to light in August. But again with Faulkner, he wrote a lot. Done.

Some of it is considered the most Important writing and in American Literature in the twentieth century, but usually just two or three or four titles. You you have an incredible Body of work.

novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, criticism, I mean the the list is extensive, the the number of publications even more so. For someone listening, if they have no familiarity with your work. Do you have any recommended starting points. I know that you could you could probably just as easily

Pick any number of Uh pieces of your work. But Are there any that that come to mind offhand as places if people want to get an an idea and appreciation for The

Range. Well, of course that depends upon what they're looking for. I have a long novel called Blon, which is about the the private life really the interior life of Marilyn Monroe.

Norma Jean Baker. The person who became Miral Munraill, but that novel's about eight hundred pages long. And so some people might feel that's just too long. Yeah. That's one of my favorite novels of my own. But then I have novellas that are only like a hundred eighty pages long.

Pursued is a new novel that came out last year. It's really um Almost like a novella is a short novel. It's probably only about two hundred pages. That's a novel that's more like a s suspense.

psychological suspense novel so that It's a mystery. And you're not really sure what has happened until the very end. So somebody might prefer A much shorter knob that's driven by a plot.

Blonde, which is about Marilyn Monroe, is not really driven by a plot. It's it's her life. Her complete life. I've selected details from her her life, but the main parts of Meryl Monroe's life are treated in great detail in that novel. And then I have an of them which is based

And my own experience living through the civil disturbance or riot. Of Detroit and July nineteen sixty seven. So if you read them, you're plunged into Detroit. In that era.

And it's a family novel. Some people like family novels. And I love family novels myself and I write them too. Many of my novels are family novels. They're about families and Usually starting with the older generation and then ending with the focus on the younger.

Just kind of shift. It'll double from One generation to the next generation. And often my novels will end the very final Page or paragraph.

is in the the province of the younger A younger member. A family. Uh, we were the Malvanies was an opera selection, so that's the novel that's More people.

I read we were m we've the Malvaneys. than any other novel of mine because it was an Oprah selection, so It's sort of guaranteed, I think like a million copies will sell. In the past. It may not be quite like that now with Oprah's book club. And I have n a novel that's sort of about the um

You know, the Vietnam War. I mean they're different And I have many short stories that are gothic, like The Haunted Haunted short stories. Tales of the grotesque. The corn maiden these are collections of short stories that are that are

Surreal or gothic. Horror, literary horror, some of them. have won awards for uh like the Bram Stoker award for For literary horror. Are there any particular whether it's short stories, novels, or otherwise

of yours that There's so many elements that go into the publication and release of a book sometimes Things get just overwhelmed by the news cycle. There could be any number of things happening at any g any given point in time. Are there any pieces of work that you have published that

you are particularly proud of That you wish had Receive the same. or a a higher degree of attention, right? You you so you have we were the Mulvanies, like you mentioned, that was an an Oprah pick and boom, all of a sudden you've got a dozen reprints of uh this particular work. Are there any others that that you're ver you're particularly proud of and wish

Had uh slightly greater visibility when people are citing the better known works of yours. Well, that's hard to answer. My novel Middle Age a Romance came out the week of nine eleven. So that was a disaster. But there was so much in the world that

was really a disaster, you know, and a tragedy that Somehow books Books of fiction didn't seem that important. At the time. Writing has a way of making its own

It makes its own way somehow. I think There's a set of consensus. What remains in your mind To be done. I mean you've done so much.

many people would argue and have argued, you know, many lifetimes of other writers you've compressed into your own in terms of uh Work. What are the uh the items that remain to be done, if if any. Or does that is that just simply not enter your mind as a

as a question, is it is it really just continuing with the craft as you have No, I I guess I don't really think in those terms. It's sort of like dreams. We may have had thousands of dreams, but yet when we fall asleep tonight we'll have one you know, I'll have A succession of dreams tonight are waiting, so It's somehow doesn't matter that you've had dreams in the past, you know, it's uh

the kind of novelty and originality and the intensity and urgency. Of the uh the new story, the new The new dream. The new novel. We always have stories to tell.

And we are you evolving. All the time and we're discovering things. As we get older our perspective starts to change. We start losing many people. When you start losing people in your own family and people who are being Close to you, your parents help to define you. So when your parents pass away.

You start to be a slightly different person. And many people who are older are thinking back over their lives. And they have a new perspective, so they may want to write A memoir? Women who lose their husbands are so

Traumatized by the That has sometimes led to to write memoirs? I wrote a widow's story, which I would never have thought I would never wanted to think I'd be writing, but I did write there.

So you were asking who You know, if somebody wanted to read my writing, where would they begin? Well, Some people like memoirs, so I've written two memoirs. Widow story. Which is very raw and immediate.

Based on my journal. Of the first three months of being a widow. Which is the most painful grief. It starts to diminish a little bit after that. But it never really goes away. But

And then a more of a uh full lifetime memoirs. The lost landscape. A a writer's story sort of looking at my Looking at my life from the perspective of being a writer, but looking at my parents and The farm that I lived on and

Many people have read that memoir and they can identify with it. Well choice This has been So much fun for me. Thank you for writing your heart out. Certainly think you exemplify that.

And I would love to just ask if there's if there's anything else that you would like to Say to those people. Listening, any closing comments or any requests of my audience? Anything at all?

Well, if you are if anyone is listening is a writer, I think You basically just have to do a lot of reading and read what you like to read. And read for pleasure and Often it's a good idea to read a number of books by the same writer. Like when I was in high school, I just fell in love with Faulkner.

And I read virtually everything of Faulkner. So I was like the only person in my age group who was reading Faulkner. But that really helped me immeasurably. Later on I went through a f D H Lawrence phase. A N Nebukov phase. I read a lot of Hemingway. I wear a lot of Virginia Wolf. There's sort of like phases that you go through.

If you're a writer, that's very natural and very good. Just go out and buy all the paperbacks, you know, of of Virginia Wolf and just spend A few months reading Virginia Wolf. It would change your life completely. I love that.

That is excellent advice. I'm doing that with Barry Lopez right now. Uh wonderful. Just incredible. Yeah, just recently passed away, but what an a what an amazing, amazing, amazing human being, an amazing writer. Uh Joyce I've really. I I I did not have the opportunity to interview him. I actually read of Wolves and Men, which so impressed me. And

I then started to look into reaching out to him and I found out he was in hospice and uh he he passed away. Just uh a week into my reading. Of Wolfson Man, just a few weeks ago. Yeah. That's so sad. How old was he?

He was uh I'm not gonna hazard a guess. I mean he he wasn't uh he wasn't extraordinarily young. Uh uh because I know that um I mean he must have I'm just

Imagining That he was probably my age when he published of Wolves and Men in I wanna say nineteen seventy eight. I'm forty three now. So so he wouldn't have been Yeah, I I think he would have been been older, but

Uh I I believe believe it was uh cancer. I can't recall the cause, but but to just getting acquainted with Barry and reading I'm about to start his memoir or what what you might consider a memoir, it's really Wonderful. I mean, I do feel like reading his collected works could really change how not ha not just how I view the craft of writing, but how

I look at life. Just the lens through which I look at life and Uh your work has done that for many people as well. So I uh I want to thank you for that.

Thank you. Yeah, that's what we all hope for. Yeah. Okay, well goodbye. Yeah, thanks so much, Joyce. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share

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