William Lashner - Past Due

Everyone seems to try, at least for a time, to write like Hemingway. His prose is so taut and spare, he makes it looks so easy. His story, “Hills Like White Elephants” seems so simple, I figured even I could do it. But the story is a masterpiece and my pale imitation of his style was a disaster. Then I discovered Kerouac and for a couple years wrote like him, long flowing sentences filled with exclamations of joy and sadness. Then for a time I tried to write like the American minimalists, Raymond Carver, Joy Williams, and I got pretty good at that. The thing about writing flat emotionless prose is that it sounds writerly. That was the prose that got me into writing school, but I wasn’t happy with it. It sounded like someone, but it didn’t sound like me.

I decided to write a first person novel and so I read all the first person books I could get my hands on. I remember A Summons to Memphis had a big effect on me, and Farewell My Lovely , but the novel that caught me most completely was All the King’s Men , by Robert Penn Warren. His language was gorgeous, of course, thick with metaphor and simile, but the thing that struck me was the streak of self-flagellation in Jack Burden’s prose. That seemed perfect for what I was trying to do and so I spent a lot of time trying to write like that. It got so bad I even read my stuff back in a Southern accent, but I consider that book one of the greatest American novels and its influence on my writing has been profound.

Question:What advice would you give to someone who wants to write?

Lashner:You have to do two things and you have to do them a lot. First you have to read as much as you can, and not just the type of book you want to write. It’s not enough, if you want to write mysteries, to read only mysteries. Read everything: romance, comedy, high literature, fast paced thrillers, science fiction. Read Martin Amis because he’s funny as hell, read Toni Morrison because of her clear eyed vision of America, read Dashiell Hammett because he’s so sharp, read Moby Dick because Melville broke all the rules, read any comic book by Frank Miller because he gets right to the point. Whenever anyone tells me she wants to write I always ask what she reads and I get a pretty good idea right there of her chances. And if you find something you really like, outline it, so that you can see how it works. Remember, now you’re reading like a writer, not just a reader, and that’s a whole different thing.

Second, you have to write. A lot. There’s no way around it. At the start it is really hard and it comes out lousy and you just have to keep doing it. My first novel was so bad I wouldn’t even show it to my mother. My mother. Some of my things she put up on the refrigerator were brutal, yet still I wouldn’t show her this. But it’s four hundred pages of prose, which is a lot of words. I learned so much writing those four hundred pages of bad prose, stuff you can’t learn from reading books about writing. The only way to find your voice is to write your way into it. But the great thing about writing is that you don’t need anybody’s permission. To make a movie you need someone to give you money. To act, you need to be cast. But to write, all you need to do is say, “I want to write,” and no one can stop you.

Copyright © William Lashner, 2004

William Lashneris a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was a criminal prosecutor with the United States Department of Justice. His novels – Fatal Flaw; Bitter Truth; Hostile Witness – have been published worldwide in ten languages. He lives with his family outside of Philadelphia.