::mslexia author method::

The Ali Smith Method
From Interview no. 18

• Usually, very unlikely things happen. Allow for this. For example, you sit down to write a story about something, but as soon as you start you find the story wants to do something else or go somewhere else. It’s important to listen to this impulse.

• Personally I don’t find that some ideas are suitable only for short stories and some for novels. If I’m working on a collection of stories, then all the ideas that come are probably relevant to the collection of stories, and if I’m working on a novel, then probably they’ll be for, and turn up somewhere in, the novel. The point is – nothing is wasted. Somewhere along the line, that idea you had two years ago but didn’t know what to do with then will reassert itself when you need it.

• Most stories are at least two stories, if not more. You have to find a way to put the pieces together. The process is actually about dialogue, the story’s own dialogue, your dialogue with whatever the story is, and the story telling you what it is back. In that meeting of writer and thing, person and process, that’s often where the life of it is. If you get it right.

• There is no correct time of day to write (people often ask if one time is better than another).

• If you get stuck, just stop and wait. Go for a walk, or lots of walks. Read other books. Usually it’ll come on its own, when it’s ready. There’s always something else to do. There’s no point in trying to force it.

• There are no rules. Let yourself be surprised.

• Don’t be scared of not writing something. Something will be happening in the creative process, even when you think nothing is.

• If you talk too much about the writing process, then the process will leave you. Think of an animal in the underbrush: if
you go towards it then it will probably run away, but if you’re very good and quiet then it will stay and it can watch you.

• Trust the process.

• As an aid to confidence bear in mind a writer like Joyce Carol Oates, who writes several books a year, just keeps going, one after the other after the other. There will always be another book after the one you’re writing. There’s always something else.

There are no rules. Let yourself be surprised.