Chang-Rae Lee Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. It's like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole. I'm not going to be able to get this section back to the right hole - so I'm just going to have to cut it.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Cutting, Boys

• I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  War, Writing, Novelists

  Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. March 5, 2010.

• I try to be aware of what I'm concerned about, aware of how I feel about myself in the world, aware of how I feel about the issues of the day, but I guess I don't want to write essays in my head about my craft and maybe it's because I teach and talk about craft of other writers as a reader. I feel the moment I start doing that is when it's going to kill me.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Issues, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

• Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Book, Writing, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'd always wanted to write something about the Korean War because of my heritage. My father lost his brother during the war, and I fictionalized that episode, which was told to me very briefly without much detail.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Brother, Father, War

  Source: therumpus.net

• We can skip through a lot of the stuff people might ask about the writing of the book, and so their comments always start well, well down into the nitty-gritty.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Book, Writing, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Character, Expression

  Source: therumpus.net

• Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there was no talk about the business, and there was probably a lot more angsty talk back then. But these days maybe there are some more laments about the culture, but I would say no.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, People, Culture

  Source: therumpus.net

• Obviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Father, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• Not to any really influential effect, but certainly there have been comments that have surprised me. It's surprising sometimes to get particular perspectives on your work, and it's enlightening sometimes to know that non-writers and readers out there have certain assumptions about everything that I both want to keep in mind and want to forget about why I write, and about the connection between me as a private person and the stuff that I think about on the page.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Thinking, Perspective

  Source: therumpus.net

• Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Thinking, Historical Novels

  Source: therumpus.net

• Maybe someone's who's a different kind of writer [would think otherwise] - someone who'd be just as comfortable writing essays on what their novels are about. Sometimes you feel like certain novelists are like that.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Thinking, Novelists

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• Some writers are writing one great, big book and just taking all these different avenues towards it. They might seem on the outside to be different, but they're really not. And that's a different kind of mindset. I don't know why it is, but I just feel like I really want to escape myself as much as I can - myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker - with each new project, because one, it's just boredom, but also, I guess I just feel most comfortable starting a new book if I just feel a little in the dark about it.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Book, Writing, Dark

  Source: therumpus.net

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