“The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the novel is done. My schedule is flexible, but I am rather particular about my instruments: lined Bristol cards and well sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with erasers.”
– Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40, The Paris Review
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“What I did for this particular outline was something I’d learned to do in technical writing, and that was to put down each idea on individual slips of paper and then compare them and see which went first. So my outline was always in a series of slips that went on, one after another.
I was just putting down these slips and comparing them. But this particular form gave me the advantage of being able to expand in the middle, of being able to reorganize at any time, so I had a flexible outline that could grow as my understanding of the story grew. I was never limited. I was free to throw away where I had been and restart again, over and over again, with what was coming in new.
And I’m sure that in any creative project you really can’t perceive what the end is going to be, unless it is a very small thing you’re doing. I think the advantage of this particular device was that it always kept me open, it always kept me flexible, it always gave me a kind of a hollowness, so that I could constantly be refilled with new things that were coming in.”
– Robert Pirsig, On Quality
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What freedom: to start a story wherever you like. To write a fragment here, another there.
I love scheduling my writing for the same time every day, but I don’t want to be told what to write on any given day, even if the telling is by me.
For a writer whose output is random blog posts, Nabokov and Pirsig give me hope that my work could be corralled into a unifying theme one day.
But more than that, I feel the flexibility to write about whatever has captured my attention.
There is no pressure to conform.
I have dozens of fragments saved as drafts, waiting for the right guests to join me for a chat.
I read On Quality in January. I always knew it would be paired with Nabakov but I was unsure where I could find a quote of him talking about his notecards.
A newsletter today from The Paris Review revealed what I had been looking for.
Two authors united in conversation by me.
This is what I love to do.
Conversations With Quotations 