Why We Write (5 page)

H
ow is Jennifer Egan exceptional? Reviewing her 2006 novel,
The Keep
, the
New York Times
counted the ways. “Jennifer Egan is a refreshingly unclassifiable novelist; she deploys most of the arsenal developed by metafiction writers of the 1960s and refined by more recent authors like William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace—but she can’t exactly be counted as one of them. The opening of her novel
The Keep
lays out a whole Escherian architecture, replete with metafictional trapdoors, pitfalls, infinitely receding reflections, and trompe l’oeil effects, but what’s more immediately striking about this book is its unusually vivid and convincing realism.”

But it’s not just the way Egan writes that makes her one of a kind; it’s
what
she writes. Journalism in the
New York Times Magazine
,
among other venues. Short stories. Book reviews. Novels, each one dramatically different from the last—most notably
A Visit from the Goon Squad
, the book she refuses to classify. “It was scary, pouring time and energy into a project that didn’t have a clear genre identity and might therefore fall through the cracks,” Egan told me in a 2010 interview for
Salon
. “The economy had crashed since I’d published my last novel. I thought my publisher might say, ‘This isn’t the moment to publish an odd book.’ Or that even if I sold the novel, it might come and go without a whisper.”

It was that brave, odd book that won Jennifer Egan the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Jennifer Egan

Why I write

When I’m not writing I feel an awareness that something’s missing. If I go a long time, it becomes worse. I become depressed. There’s something vital that’s not happening. A certain slow damage starts to occur. I can coast along awhile without it, but then my limbs go numb. Something bad is happening to me, and I know it. The longer I wait, the harder it is to start again.

When I’m writing, especially if it’s going well, I’m living in two different dimensions: this life I’m living now, which I enjoy very much, and this completely other world I’m inhabiting that no one else knows about. I don’t think my husband can tell. It’s a double life I get to live without destroying my marriage. And it’s heaven.

Especially when I’m writing a first draft, I feel as if I’ve been transported out of myself. That’s always a state I’m trying to achieve, even as a journalist—although when I’m working on nonfiction I’m almost never actually writing. I do months of research and then write the piece in a few days.

When I’m writing fiction I forget who I am and what I come from. I slip into utter absorption mode. I love the sense that I’ve become so engaged with the other side, I’ve slightly lost my bearings here. If I’m going from the writing mind-set to picking my kids up from school, I often feel a very short but acute kind of depression, as if I have the bends. Once I’m with them it totally disappears, and I feel happy again. Sometimes I forget I have children, which is very strange. I feel guilty
about it, as if my inattention will cause something to happen to them, even when I’m not responsible for them—that God will punish me.

When the writing’s going well—I’m trying not to sound clichéd—I feel fueled by a hidden source. During those times it doesn’t matter if things are going wrong in my life; I have this alternate energy source that’s active. When the writing’s going poorly, it’s as bad or worse than not writing at all. There’s a leak or a drain, and energy is pouring out of it. Even when the rest of my life is fine, I feel like something’s really bad. I have very little tolerance for anything going wrong, and I take little joy from the good things. It was worse before I had kids. I appreciate that they make me forget what’s going on professionally.

Anticipation trumps reality

This is an interesting moment to consider why I write, because I’m not writing now. When I’m where I am now, and I haven’t yet started the next book, boy, is that next book going to be great! It’s lots easier to think that than when you’re actually writing it. Fantasy provides its own satisfactions.

I can’t begin a new novel while I’m working on anything else. I’m desperate for traction with fiction, and I can’t get it till I put pen to paper. Now I’ve got my sights set on the New Year. Before that it was September. Before that it was summer. It’s definitely time to get involved in a large project. I feel that keenly. All I ever have to begin with is the when and where of a novel. I have a good feeling about those elements of my next one, but in the end, when and where is not a book.

The girl with the throwaway novel

My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became
The Invisible Circus
.

When I was twenty-nine I got an NEA grant, which gave me a year to work on
Circus.
I finished the first draft and sat down to read it, hoping I’d find it to be fantastic. Instead I read it and found it to be really weak. I didn’t get far in my reading; I went crazy before I could even get to the middle. How far it seemed from something you could sell or want to read was really scary.

I went into this three-day panic attack that was quite extreme. This was before I’d ever had therapy. I was pushing thirty. I’d quit my job as a private secretary when I got the grant. And now the NEA money was running out. I had to find another job, and I had no professional track record except as a temp.

All those worries flared into a mania when I read the draft. I really went haywire. I was walking around the East Village having the worst panic attack I’ve ever had. It was harrowing. I was calling people, apologizing for saying I’d ever be a writer. I felt very unstable, like my whole life had no point. It was a genuine existential crisis. I didn’t eat for four days. I was like a gaunt specter of terror lurking around the East Village in a trench coat. I’d just started living with the man who became my husband. He’d come home from rehearsal, and I’d pounce on him, needing to be resuscitated. I imagined him thinking, “Oh, God, what have I gotten myself into? This girl is out of her mind.”

Somehow I managed to get out of this nutty behavior. In four days I was back at work on the novel. I tore the thing apart and put it back together. Amid all that hand-wringing, and moping and weeping, some other part of my brain was thinking about how I could improve the manuscript. It wasn’t long before I wanted to enact those improvements. And once I was back in it, making it better, I immediately calmed down. All that wheel-spinning, all that agony resulted in a clear logistical plan.

That’s how it seems to work for me. I can be wigging out, but I’m also working.

Look at me: cross-eyed

Working on
Look at Me
was the most painful experience I’ve had as a writer. It was a huge struggle. I’m not quite sure why I suffered to the degree I did, working on that book, but I do know that my work up to that point had been fairly conventional, and I didn’t know if anyone would accept that kind of book from me. It was almost as if I thought I’d be punished for it. I felt afraid as I worked on it. I thought it was terrible, that I was reaching too far.

At the same time, some of the most exciting moments I’ve had as a writer were during the writing of that book, even with all those worries and that feeling of doom. One day I read the first six chapters of the book in one sitting, and I tore out of the house and went running, and I had this sense that I’d never read anything quite like that before, that I’d done something really different. That was such a thrilling feeling.

On the other hand, writing
The Keep
and
Goon Squad
were
only difficult until I’d arrived at a voice for each of them. From then on, they were sheer fun. Once I got the voice I was in heaven.
The Keep
, especially, was a romp.

It’s all about seeing what’s wrong

One of my strengths as a writer is that I’m a good problem solver. I write these unthinking, ungoverned first drafts. The project for me always is to turn that instinctive stuff into pages that work.

I want all the flights of fancy, and I can only get them in a thoughtless way. So I allow myself that. Which means that my next step has to be all about problem solving. My attitude cannot be, Gee, I wrote it, it’s good. I’d never get anywhere. It’s all about seeing what’s wrong from a very analytical place. It’s a dialectic.

Once I have a draft I make the plans, edit on hard copy, and make an extensive outline for the revision. The revision notes I wrote for
Look at Me
were eighty pages long.

Winning the Pulitzer: priceless

The response to
Goon Squad
has definitely made me a happier person. There’s a deep joy and satisfaction in getting external acknowledgment of that magnitude. Winning the Pulitzer, specifically, feels like a thousand wishes being granted. All these years I’ve had a longing for some kind of massive approval—not thinking I deserved it, but just wanting it. I never thought it would happen.

This is a big change. I don’t think it’s changing me, but it’s
a change I feel on a daily, hourly basis in a very positive way. If you can’t enjoy this, my God, it’s really time to go back into therapy. It’s delicious!

In one hundred years, if humans still exist, and if anyone remembers the name Jennifer Egan, they’ll decide whether I deserve the Pulitzer or not. The question doesn’t preoccupy me. I’ve judged a major prize and I know how it works. It all comes down to taste, and therefore, luck. If you happen to be in the final few, it’s because you’re lucky enough to have written something that appeals to those particular judges’ tastes.

I think my book is strong, and I know I did a good job. I also know it could have been better. There are plenty of books out there that are also good, and those writers could also have had the luck I had. Deserving only gets you so far. Winning a prize like that has a lot to do with cultural forces; with appetites at work in the culture.

Honestly, I prefer
Look at Me.
Maybe I’m just being stubborn because
Goon Squad
gets so much love, but
Look at Me
is the one that’s stayed with me imaginatively.
Goon Squad
may have ended up being more ambitious than I thought it would be, but for whatever reason,
Look at Me
dug into me. That doesn’t mean it’s better. It probably has more flaws than
Goon Squad
. But
Look at Me
is my favorite child.