Quote

I beat a story to within an inch of its life - that's when I know its done. Not before, not after.

Peter Orner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Peter Orner
Age: 54
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Life
Inch
Inches
Beat
Beats
Within
Story
Stories
Done

More quotes by Peter Orner

Image
I think what I'm after, a lot of the time, is just honesty. What accounts for the fact that the stories we tell ourselves - the story we carry around and think of most often - are the dark ones? Maybe we have to wander around in the darkness to understand it?
Peter Orner
Image
I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the deal, that you create these people out of thin air but then, if you do it right, they actually live.
Peter Orner
Image
If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it it doesn't truly end.
Peter Orner
Image
As a professor I can't teach writing.
Peter Orner
Image
I think some writers should wait for something to say.
Peter Orner
Image
I write when I have something to say and not when I don't. My time is better spent if I know I have nothing to say. I don't consider it writer's block I just don't have anything to say.
Peter Orner
Image
I agonize over things like this - the order of things, section titles, all this architectural sort of stuff. Takes me years to figure out.
Peter Orner
Image
I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.
Peter Orner
Image
I always say writing fiction isn't something you teach. It's something you do, and only experimentation - i.e. doing it, either badly or good sometimes - can help anybody get any better or worse at it.
Peter Orner
Image
Actually, you’re not famous at all. Maybe you’ll get some traction after you’re dead?
Peter Orner
Image
But this is exactly why I read--and don't belong to a book group--because reading is the most individual thing there is. Why collectivize it? Didn't we have enough bad English teachers in school? Crowd sourcing and literature shouldn't mix.
Peter Orner
Image
I have a friend who teaches yoga (or is it pilates?), and she said that I don't seem to live in the moment. And I said, Exactly! I'd go nuts if I lived in the moment.
Peter Orner
Image
I usually have a location and then I put the character there. I love place names. I think I'm tricking myself by being so specific - it suddenly becomes real to me. Just because I say it's Chicago, Illinois doesn't mean it's true, but place names sort of make me grounded and then I can put some people there.
Peter Orner
Image
My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.
Peter Orner
Image
I'm constantly trying to figure out how to crack that mystery how to make a novel that has a sense of immediacy of a short story. I try to do that and I'll try it again, but I'll never get it.
Peter Orner
Image
Maybe my work is somewhat divided into family stories, things I know intimately, and then everybody else in the world - the strangers who I am totally fascinated with.
Peter Orner
Image
I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure revise is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.
Peter Orner
Image
Lot of stories in deceit, how characters deceive other people, but most of all, I think, how they deceive themselves. We're not as tricky as we think we are.
Peter Orner
Image
I write by hand in my notebooks and number the drafts, so I know how crazy I can get with this. Some writers, like my teacher Marilynne Robinson, she only writes one draft. I've thought about this a lot I think it's because she writes it 80 times in her head before it comes out.
Peter Orner