Notes on Process: Bringing Material Forward vs Leaving It All Behind
In this episode, I discuss a brief trip I took to Fredericton over reading week to launch my new collaborative horror-adjacent anthology Dead Writers and give a talk on sentences, sound, and Gordon Lish’s idea of consecution. I then discuss consecution with references to Garielle Lutz’s “The Sentence is a Lonely Place” and Christine Schutt’s interview with Deb Olin Unferth and lecture at Sewanee. I also read and discuss Schutt’s story “Honorificabilitudinitatibus” from the 2024 issue of Noon Annual.
I then discuss every writer’s nightmare: losing a 4500-word draft of a new story I was working on. I talk about the concept of a “Draft Zero” my friend helpfully reminded me of, as well as Lauren Groff’s method of intentionally rewriting a novel without looking at her previous draft. While I ended up rewriting most of my draft, I discuss the pros and cons of such an exercise and present two prompts:
1) Write a flash fiction piece using elements of consecution such as taking a sound or image from the sentence that came before, and bringing it forward into the next sentence, scene, or paragraph in your story.
2) Think of an old draft of yours that you’ve given up on. It might be something you wrote last week, last month, or last year. Then, try rewriting it without looking at the original draft.
What is carried forward? What did you leave behind?
