Tweetables from Andre Dubus III:
“If you want tenacity, get the fuck off social media!”
“I’ve been writing five-six days a week for 35 years without fail.”
“The truth is, if you want to write or create anything worth a damn, you better embrace failure or you’re not going to get to the good stuff.”
“It’s an act of generosity to give the reader less.”
“Anything written to please the author is worthless.”
“The central thing about writing I find most joyous is that it’s an act of discovery.”
“[Richard Russo] said, ‘If it were me, I’d ask, am I trying to hurt anyone with this book? Am I trying to settle scores?'”
Andre Dubus III, author the memoir Townie and the novels House of Sand and Fog and Dirty Love, stopped by the podcast to talk about memoir, the essay, and writing in general.
“The truth is, if you want to write or create anything worth a damn, you better embrace failure or you’re not going to get to the good stuff. You gotta learn to love how hard it is,” he says.
This episode is so packed with great, actionable, and inspiring material from a “made” writer, meaning he built himself into the writer he wanted to be. If you think you don’t have time to write, just wait until you hear him talk about how he found the time to write his breakout novel House of Sand and Fog. Talk about rigor.
Please review the podcast iTunes and pass this along to a friend you think will get something out of it. If your friend is a writer, I know s/he will get something out of this episode.
Thanks for listening!
