The following four interviews (with Robert Ashley, Vanessa Place, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Curtis White) were conducted as part of an ongoing project that we’ve been calling “Writing’s Dirty Secret.” Although writing is largely perceived as a strictly intellectual means of expression, it is no less a physical activity than work in any of the plastic arts. The composition of a text requires discipline, physical practice, and particular tools. However, while discussion of the materials and practices employed by painters, sculptors, and musicians is commonplace, and a necessary feature of any relevant criticism, the question, “How do you write?” (and its cousins, “What time of day do you write?,” “Do you write longhand or with a computer?”, etc.) is among the most denigrated of all literary-interview questions; indeed, it is considered gauche and counterproductive.
We believe that the products of writing cannot and should not be separated from the act of writing. In conducting these interviews, our goal was not interpretation or evaluation, but rather an open-ended investigation into writing as both intellectual and physical labor. We hope that the results of this project will be of interest to readers, critics, fellow writers, and writing students (who often receive no instruction in the physical aspect of the art form, and are left to discover for themselves what every writer soon discovers for her- or himself).
While we acknowledge and even embrace the willful perversity of this focus, our goal being to conduct interviews on writing stripped of what is commonly regarded as the “poetry” of the art; we nonetheless feel that there is legitimate and lasting value in taking a clear-eyed look at how literature is made. (This is especially true given how much discomfort and dismissal there is surrounding the subject.) Certainly, what ultimately matters is a writer’s work; but just as our culture and the history of our language influences what can and can’t be said in print (whether or not we care to be influenced), the way our bodies are made to produce text must, necessarily, influence what we can and cannot accomplish with our words; just as words must, necessarily, influence our bodies in return.
Jeremy M. Davies
A D Jameson