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

Peter Orner

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

More quotes by Peter Orner

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.
Peter Orner
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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
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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
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As a professor I can't teach writing.
Peter Orner
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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
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If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it it doesn't truly end.
Peter Orner
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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
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I think some writers should wait for something to say.
Peter Orner
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Actually, you’re not famous at all. Maybe you’ll get some traction after you’re dead?
Peter Orner
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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
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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
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My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.
Peter Orner
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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