Category: improvisation

On Finding Fiction Late In Life.

By Donald Ray Pollock, interviewed at NPR

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/17/158998083/donald-ray-pollock-on-finding-fiction-late-in-life

When he first started writing, Pollock says he typed out a story by another famous writer at least once a week in order to learn how to put dialogue together and move from scene to scene.

“John Cheever, Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Richard Yates, Denis Johnson, and the list goes on and on,” he says. “If the story wasn’t overly long, I’d type it out. And I’d carry it around with me for a week and jot notes on it, and then I’d throw it away and do another one.”