For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.
I write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it’s almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.
A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.
I actually got thrown into my Bar Mitzvah because my teacher, my Cantor, did not tell me that they would all say ‘amen’ at the end of each, for want of a better word, paragraph. And that threw me completely. I almost went into an Ella Fitzgerald sort of scat.
Writers are in control of editing processes – making a sentence better, cutting out a paragraph. But the initial outpouring has very little to do with conscious control or manipulation.
Every ethnic group has a mythology… Until ‘Roots’… there was nothing in the popular culture to refute the paragraph in elementary school history class that said, ‘Slaves picked the cotton, were happy and life wasn’t so bad.’
When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you’re doing is not any kind of public show, until you’re ready for it.
I’ll get a three-page letter and the last paragraph says ‘I know you’ll never read this, but here’s my number.’ I love to call those people because the first thing they say is, ‘Governor, I didn’t mean everything I said in the letter about you.’
When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you’re doing is not any kind of public show, until you’re ready for it.
The first paragraph of my book must get me my reader. The last paragraph of a chapter must compel my reader to turn the page. The last paragraph of my book must ensure that my reader looks out for my next book.
I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.
I do small cameos here and there but nothing that requires more than a paragraph of talking, because I’m just an amateur. The movie is a whole different reality.
There are days when I’ll write for 15 minutes and have to give up and move around, and I’ll write another paragraph and give up again. On other days I get intensely – focused on the process, sit down at 8 A.M. and won’t get up until 8 P.M.
I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I’m dodging bullets and gasping for breath.
Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.
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