[MUSIC] Hi. Welcome to another Shop Talk. We're talking today with novelist Salvatore Scibona, who is the author of the national book award finalist, The End. He's going to talk to us today a little bit about language. Salvatore, I'm glad that you're here. >> Thank you. >> So let me start off with a piece of advice that I know that a lot of writers are given when they've been working on a piece for a certain period of time. Writers are often suggested that they read their work aloud to distinguish what's working and what should be cut. What are they listening for? >> That is such a good question, and I have to tell you that I do that over and over and over and over again because not in order to be scrupulous, but just in order to wake up. I just find it very difficult to notice the language if I'm not saying it, and there is something sort of, I think. Language comes from speech. So when it gets divorced from speech, I think I almost wonder whether the mind is made to process language as speech, and there's something sort of off about doing it outside of speech. Actually, there's some story, I want to say it's in Augustine's Confessions or something like that, right, where it was one of the earliest, it was sort of praising, maybe I'm making this up. But praising, I think it was Saint Ambrose, who was supposed to be so brilliant that he actually could read without talking. And because up to that time- >> It’s his story, I hope it's true. [LAUGH] >> Right? Someone should correct me about who actually. But in any case, the idea before relatively recently, 1,000, 1500 years ago, whatever, was that everybody, written words were made to be said aloud. That's why they existed. It’s just sort of as a script. So I find that there are lots of simple mistakes that people make that they don't pick up until they read things aloud. And then the other thing is if you read out loud your own work repeatedly, you find that you get really bored with certain passages. You find that you want to fast forward. And you find yourself wanting to fast forward, that's the key. You go I'm not interested in this anymore. This doesn't have any punch to it. And then you start to look for the places that can go. I think those are really excellent points again. So, just keeping in mind it sounds very straightforward but it's a simple truism that language does come from speech. The fact that you can talk these things out, looking for simple errors, looking for typos, but also looking for the places that are boring. Really key components in reading your work aloud. I was doing some research for this interview and I came across a Paris Review interview from a writer I'm assumed that you, whose work are you familiar with and enjoy like I do, Rick Moody. >> Mm-hm. >> And here's what he had to say. And I thought it was just such a delightful quote that I wanted to share this with everybody here. Rick Moody was asked, what is it about language that he feels is so important? And Moody said, language pleases, which I think is just such a wonderful, delightful way to describe, that, you basically, what we enjoy about language. And then later in the same interview, Moody said every writer, no matter who he or she is, uses language on some personal level, and believe that their language is genuine. What does he mean, and what is genuine about the language that you use, as a writer? >> Wow, I wonder what he means. >> [LAUGH] I'm parsing it through. >> No, but genuine is a really great word. In some way, the really great American story writer Grace Paley, who died only a few years ago used to say in jury's at the Fine Arts and Works Center in province town where I used to work people were in previous areas when she was still on the jury. She said that she would sometimes stop the reading and say, but is it true about the story. Is it true? And then you think of the thing that Hemingway said that all you have to do is write one true thing and then write one more true thing and one more true thing. That's a very simple word, but what does it mean in the context especially fiction say? People say that journalism is responsible to the facts and fiction is responsible to the truth. What exactly does true mean in that setting? I'm not sure except that I know it when I see it. There's some kind of, you like, you ever work on a sentence for a really long time or a passage for a long time, and you just feel that there's something that's not quite working about it. And then I often find that there's something that I don't want to admit. Whether that's in a nonfiction piece or in a fiction piece, there's a parallel thing in fiction. Like maybe I don't want a certain thing to be true of this character, and then I let it out. And there's something that seems genuine about that. There's something that, maybe genuineness is underneath. You could speak of a genuine observation, as something that was under the pressure of the reel. You know that the [CROSSTALK] reality in some way was pushing on it. And, something that was not under pressure from the reel it's plausible but it doesn't have that pop where you realize, that's so right people really are like that. >> I think that's again just a really wonderful observation. Thinking about an acknowledgment perhaps that you want to make about a character, which perhaps is an extension of what you felt or observed or thought. And once you acknowledge it, put it on the page, it just rings the way that is true and genuine and just makes your fiction such a richer and deeper, more rewarding experience. >> You know that makes me think that there was a moment in my novel, The End, when I had been working for a couple of months. Actually this is ridiculous, but I had been working for a couple of months on trying to get one character, effectively one character to go into a room where I knew something important was going to happen. It was just basically, in other terms it was a transition from one scene to another scene. And then I had this moment when Was as if the character looked up from the page and said I don't want to go in there. >> They do that though right?? >> Like that's not to me, and they do that yeah. And that was a moment of genuineness. Like that was a moment when I really realized I must acknowledge that the character has developed a level of reality or internal consistency that allowed her that kind of will, which in retrospect, it sounds like great, wow, isn't that wonderful. At the moment it was happening It was infuriating, because I built up all of this plot structure to get this person into this room, and then I realized I had to get rid of it. >> Characters will do that. Characters will do that. And I know that for you, you are taking the Coursera course. If you're looking for more information about character, any module on character pretty much has you covered. So, in the remaining time that we have left here, I want to talk a little bit about editing versus revising because I know that that's something that we're both doing modules on. How do you decide what language gets re-written versus language that just should be cut entirely? That I feel is one of the key challenges for any writer going through a work that perhaps they've had several outside readers give them different feedback, different advice, different input. How do you make that determination? >> Well personally I rewrite incessantly. I mean basically all I do is rewrite. I very rarely have things that are composed from the blank page. Most of the work that I'm doing is fitting paragraphs or sentences in between things that are already there. So it’s though a chapter could start off almost with half a page, and then it ends up being 40 pages long just by the process of rewriting. When things come out, it's usually under duress. [LAUGH] But that still, the duress is, I mean, is constant. I probably wrote, I think in my first book I wrote probably four full chapters for everyone that's in the book. I had to cut- >> That you never used. >> That I never used yeah. I mean they're still there. I wrote the information into the world and I knew it so that the thing could refer, the piece could refer to these things that were off stage as it were, but y I remember one very trusted reader that I had. She's the first person who read the first full draft of the whole book. She had written in the margin. She had had a lot of things to say about other pages, and then there were a few pages where it was getting kind of blank and I thought, everything's fine. She's really liking it as it is, and then I turn the page and she had written an arrow up, an arrow down and a line across the whole thing meaning this whole section and written, I'm not interested in any of this. >> [LAUGH] >> It was about this whole thing that happened in Wyoming and I'd had gone to Wyoming. I had worked for about nine months on this section of the book, and then I realized that if I wanted to I could close off here and I could close off here and join them. Sort of like cinching up pants, [LAUGH] like taking the waist in on a pair of pants or something. Just like that, and, that whole extra section could go and the book would probably be better. >> And usually that's when you know, if you're able to cut something and remove something and the work that you're working on, the novel, short story, it feels like it reads better, tighter. You probably made the right decision, cutting it. Salvador Shabona, thank you so much. >> Thanks, Brando. [MUSIC]
