Gay Talese On Writers Block Gay Talese | Big Think

Gay Talese On Writers Block
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Writing has never been fun, but with enough time its pretty good.
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Gay Talese:

Gay Talese is an American journalist and a nonfiction writer. He wrote for The New York Times in the 1960s after working for its copy and obituary sections. In the 1950s, he was one of the first writers to add minute details, use literary flairs, and begin articles in medias res.

His groundbreaking article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" was named the "best story Esquire ever published," and he was credited by Tom Wolfe with the creation of an inventive form of nonfiction writing called "The New Journalism."

He has written many non-fiction books, beginning with 1964’s The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. His 2006 autobiography A Writer’s Life focuses on his trials and failures as a writer, such as having a profile piece rejected by The New Yorker, which ironically reviewed the book positively and said it had a “distinctly moving” quality.

Gay Talese was named the winner of a George Polk Award for career achievement. The awards, presented by Long Island University, are considered among the top prizes in U.S. journalism. His latest book is High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Have you ever experienced writers block?

Gay Talese: Probably I have writer’s block as a natural condition. I mean when I was a journalist working on a daily newspaper, my only job was The New York Times and it was only between 1956 and 1965, a nine-year period, and I’d have about four hours to write something. And I’d go out and get an assignment in the morning and at one o’clock I’d go back to the office and by seven o’clock it was supposed to be into the desk, into the editor. And I’d be laboring over it and laboring on it. It would be two or three hours sitting there in the city room sweating it through. There were other colleagues of mine who would just sit there as if they’re playing a piano in a fraternity house. It was all coming easily and it was just fun. They were having fun. I never had any fun. I didn’t think writing was fun for me. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now. But I had always a feeling that I can do a better sentence. I can tell it better. If I only had another 20 minutes, another 50 minutes, another 3 hours, another 20 hours, another 20 years, I can do it better. And sometimes you become with that mentality, you create these blocks. I mean it isn’t blocks so much as you want to rise above the ordinary, the mediocre, the easy to do, the functionary. You want to rise, you want to do something. You want to do something more worthy of the more discerning reader. And that takes time. It takes time, as my father always said, to make a good suit. Well, it takes time to write a good paragraph. To write a good book takes a lot of time. So you might say writer’s block, but I thought writer’s block, I mean that’s the phrase, but I thought sometimes writers write too much. I mean sometimes writers should say, “This is beneath my level just so I can get it published and maybe some readers will read it.” But sometimes writers write too much and they write secondary- they let it go there and it goes out there and Barnes & Noble’s shelves are filled with this stuff. They’re a famous writer, you can write two bad books and you get a good book and a bad book. I’m not saying you always know what a good book is. I mean you think you’ve written a good book and then maybe you’re coming to believe because reviewers have penetrated your sense of self it’s not a good book. I mean I think of the writers who are great fiction writers. Let’s just take people in my lifetime. I think William Styron wrote very, very, very, very few books that were not on a high level, whether they were long or short, whether they were Sophie’s Choice or Confessions of Nat Turner or a book about his own depression, it’s a fine book. You know, some of the writers that are more prolific who are contemporaries, I don’t have to name them, you can probably imagine who I’m speaking, wrote too many books.

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