Can great writing be reduced to process?
Not exactly, looking at this piece on great writers and how they write. These novelists — Richard Powers, Nicholson Baker, Junot Diaz, Margaret Atwood, Anne Rice and 12 others — all have different methods. Some procrastinate, some don’t (none of them seem to always get it right the first time). Some write things out longhand, some type on the computer. We humans take so many paths to self-expression! My favorite comment was from Michael Ondaatje, who said “Some writers know what the last sentence is going to be before they begin—I don’t even know what the second sentence is going to be.”
Even though I’m a non-fiction writer living in an age when the novel supposedly has run its course, I enjoyed a focus on these great storytellers.