Lawrence Block
I stopped by Partners & Crime mystery bookstore yesterday to hear Lawrence Block talk about writing and his new book. Block's a prolific crime writer, but I was first introduced to him through his book "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit." I'm trying to write a novel for the first time and I find that after reading only a couple pages of "Telling Lies," I've got new ideas bouncing around in my head and feel the spark to get writing again.

Block, by the way, has just started a blog to go with his book tour. You can check it out on his site.

As always, I had my notebook, so here are some of the things he had to say.

Block said he doesn't do book reviews because he "never wanted to be placed in a position where I said something negative about another writer."

When asked how long he spends on each novel, Block said he can write one in four to six weeks if he sequesters himself at a writer's colony. Block said he usually starts work on a novel and has no idea where it's going to lead. "I'm usually about a chapter ahead in my mind." In one of his Bernie detective novels, he said he was very worried about what he was going to do to pull the whole story together in a climax. "I kept waiting for things to be clear," Block said. "I think it was when Bernie said 'I bet you're all wondering why I gathered you here today,' - No one was wondering more than me." But Block said he kept writing and everything magically fell into place. "Bernie was a better detective than I was." He went on to explain "most of the work gets done on a level that the conscious mind has no knowledge of whatsoever." And when questioned again about that 4 to 6 weeks for working on a novel, he said "it's hard to know when you start." (Meaning your brain is working on the story before you sit down to write.)

He quoted an E.L. Doctorow line: "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

A few other lines: On writing his first book in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series: "When I first started writing, Bernie was just there - with all the same patterns he has now."

"I thought burglary might suit me because it's really not all that different from writing. You get to set your own hours, avoid human contact, and unless something goes wrong, it's violence-free."
- posted by Amy @ 3/22/2004 09:52:00 AM