Hi all! I was so impressed by yesterday’s giveaway that I had to ask the author a few questions about his process. Now, I realize you may be thinking “Why would I read an interview with an author who I haven’t read yet!?” Well, Meyer was so generous and insightful with regard to his process, I think reading his answers will make you even more interested in reading his novel — if not, then please come back once you have read — or seen — American Rust.
–When planning your novel, did you create your narrative chronologically or by character? If by character, whose perspective first came to you? Which characters’ perspective were easiest to create — which were hardest? How did you decide which perspectives to include — and exclude?
PR: Probably both. The book came out of a vision I had of two young men running along some train tracks in a rural area. They were by a river and they were running from something that had gone terribly wrong. I knew the young men were opposites in many ways, and I knew the sort of isolated rural area they lived in-an area that had once been prosperous, but no longer was.
As I worked on American Rust over the course of three plus years, the details began to fill in. I wrote a 100-page outline, threw it out, then an 80-page outline. But when I actually started writing the book, it diverged from the outline immediately. My process is that I write a bunch, stop and check to make sure everything still makes sense, make adjustments as necessary, then keep writing. Basically a continuous process of revising as I write.
Of the six characters, the voice that was the hardest was Isaac-so much of what he thinks is layered with all sorts of prose poetry and there are so many different levels on which he is thinking at any given time. It was an enormous amount of work to harmonize it all. The easiest voice to write was Poe.
The perspective I was most intimidated to begin writing was Grace, but once I figured her out it came pretty smoothly. In the end, you find some thread into a character’s mind and spirit and use it to pull yourself inside them. You spend every day inside their mind. You become them. Of course, learning how to do that-how to channel someone so different from yourself-might be the hardest part. It took me about a decade to learn.
There were two big changes in terms of the other characters. Harris started out as the antagonist-I envisioned him as a crooked small town sheriff. But I soon realized (after about nine months of working on the book) that my initial impression of him was wrong. That Harris was one of the good guys. So that was a big turnaround.
Another big change was Virgil (Grace’s husband and Poe’s father). I initially wrote about 90-100 pages of the book from Virgil’s perspective. Some of it was really great-beautiful writing, beautiful scenes. But after about a year of working on the book, it became apparent to me that Virgil was not pulling his weight as a character. He did not deserve to be in the novel-his story was not central to the main events of the book.
So I killed him off, essentially. I still remember the day I did it, I was wandering around downtown Austin, wondering if I was really going to cut Virgil out of the novel. It was quite a lonely feeling and it was also quite frustrating as I’d spent an enormous amount of time writing his scenes.
But in the end, I knew they didn’t belong. It didn’t matter how much work I’d done on those pages. People talk about novels being more loosely constructed than short stories, but I think that is basically crap. A novel is as tightly constructed as any other piece of narrative. It’s just a lot longer. Which makes it a hell of a lot harder to write. Frankly, you can often fake it in short stories-you don’t have to know a character that well to write twenty pages about her/him.
But in a novel, you may have to write 200 pages of exposition/character studies just to figure out who the character really is. By the time I’d finished American Rust, I’d written at least 2,500-3,000 pages. I could have written another ten thousand-I knew those people so well. But in the end, your allegiance is to the story itself. The story I wanted to tell turned out to be about 375 pages. It didn’t matter how much more I knew about the characters. The rest didn’t belong in the book.
– Your novel could be an indictment of one-industry towns / big business, yet is never merely that. The characters are so fully realized that any sort of “political statement” quickly becomes secondary to the rich characterization and gripping narrative. Do you want your novel to make a statement — or would this narrow your focus/intent too much?
PR: I think it’s difficult to make a piece of art that doesn’t take a point of view on humanity, but I think we have to be very careful about taking points of view that our characters would not take. Our obligation as writers/artists is to tell the truth as we see it. You can be political, philosophical, intellectual only to the extent that your story and characters will support it.
My goal in writing the book was simply to show things as they are-what life is like in these post-industrial towns that used to be the heartland of America. People can draw their own conclusions-for instance The Economist thought the novel showed the dangers of welfare dependency-which it does-whereas other reviewers thought the novel showed the dangers of globalization-which it also does. And in the end, I think that means I achieved what I wanted-readers brought their own points of view to it.
I think someone like George Orwell ended up in the ideal situation (in terms of the way people view his work)-he is claimed by both the left and the right. I think that’s because Orwell’s stories are so true to our experience of humanity/life. Regardless of our political outlook, we see Orwell as one of our own.
– One reviewer believed American Rust evoked Steinbeck, yet I thought Cormac McCarthy or JM Coetzee might be better references. Do you mind being compared to other writers? Who do YOU consider to be your antecedents?
PR: Steinbeck, Coetzee, McCarthy-I think it’s an honor to be compared to any of those writers. I don’t know how other writers think about this, but I try to bring my own point of view to the work, my own outlook on life. I write about people and problems and questions that interest me. When you read enough of an author’s work, you figure out how they look at the world, what their opinions about people are-are they optimistic or pessimistic about humanity, do they think we’re all doomed or is there still hope? You figure out how they probably vote, their opinions on various issues. For me, it is really important to ignore all of this, even when I agree with it. For a book or other artwork to be good, it has to be a representation of what its creator thinks, not a representation of what its creator’s mentors think.
So what I look to other writers for is how to actually write-what formal and stylistic choices to make that best conveys the meaning I’m trying to convey. For example, there are things you can get across in a Faulkner-esque style that you can’t get across writing like Hemingway. And vice-versa. So from a formal and stylistic point of view, the folks I look to most are the great stream-of-consciousness writers-Joyce, Wolff, Faulkner, and the Scottish writer James Kelman. But I also wonder if this will change with time, and if I might give a different answer ten years from now. I hope so.
– I was initially excited, then apprehensive, when I read American Rust would be made into a movie since in addition to a gripping narrative, I found your prose to be a great strength of this novel — which could be difficult to recreate. How much influence do you have regarding whether the film stays true to your original vision?
PR: I’m still figuring that out. The Hollywood folks have been really gracious so far and asked for my input, which I’m willing to give up to a point, and they’re willing to listen up to a point. But in the end, books and movies are completely different art forms. I would like the film to be true to the book only insofar as it helps the film to be the best film it can be. Which is maybe another way of saying I have a pretty solid emotional distance from it. The book was my project, which has inspired someone else to make their own project. That’s great, but it’s theirs, not mine. The reason I get up in the morning is still to write novels. I love movies, but it’s as a viewer, not a creator.
– What’s next? Any chance of an American Rust, pt. 2?
PR: I guess it’s impossible to predict the future, but right now, I feel like I’ve already told that story. The novel I’m working on now is about a very different segment of American society. It begins at the moment of death of a Texas oil mogul, moving backwards in time throughout her life. It also tells the story of her grandchildren, who’ve rejected their trust funds and gone off to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and her great-grandparents, who settled in Texas while it was still the frontier and watched it grow into the machine age. It’s another big “American” sort of novel. Right now, I’m pretty in love with it.
WONDERFUL interview! There is so much insight into how an author develops characters and plot and themes and…..well, it was really great and one that I will want to re-read to help me with my own writing endeavors.
I have read nothing but favorable reviews of this novel and look forward to reading it sometime in the near future.
Thank you. I loved this insight into Meyer’s writing process. Knowing the author has put so much careful thought into his novel only attracts me to it more. I’m thinking this is a future read for my book club.
Great Q& A! He sounds like a very serious artist, but I like what he said about film and books being of two different art forms. Interesting perspective!
Thank you for the comments!! I always hesitate to do interviews — fearing reading about a work before actually enjoying the work itself would seem futile.
I’m so glad to read that you all enjoyed Meyer’s thoughts about writing…