![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
John Updike
Jul. 17th, 2016 07:33 pm<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
INTERVIEWER
I'd like to ask a bit about your work habits if I may. What sort of schedule do you follow?
UPDIKE
I write every weekday morning. I try to vary what I am doing, and my verse, or poetry, is a help here. Embarked on a long project, I try to stay with it even on dull days. ... Most came right the first time — rode on their own melting, as Frost said of his poems. If there is no melting, if the story keeps sticking, better stop and look around. In the execution there has to be a “happiness” that can't be willed or foreordained. It has to sing, click, something. I try instantly to set in motion a certain forward tilt of suspense or curiosity, and at the end of the story or novel to rectify the tilt, to complete the motion.
-- John Updike at The Paris Review (Winter 1968)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
INTERVIEWER
I'd like to ask a bit about your work habits if I may. What sort of schedule do you follow?
UPDIKE
I write every weekday morning. I try to vary what I am doing, and my verse, or poetry, is a help here. Embarked on a long project, I try to stay with it even on dull days. ... Most came right the first time — rode on their own melting, as Frost said of his poems. If there is no melting, if the story keeps sticking, better stop and look around. In the execution there has to be a “happiness” that can't be willed or foreordained. It has to sing, click, something. I try instantly to set in motion a certain forward tilt of suspense or curiosity, and at the end of the story or novel to rectify the tilt, to complete the motion.
-- John Updike at The Paris Review (Winter 1968)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
