SMW: Writing in sprouts
Claire-Louise Bennett on her writing process
Claire-Louise Bennett on the process of writing her deliciously strange short story collection Pond. (From the Shakespeare and Company podcast)1
INTERVIEWER: …how are you composing this? Are you working linearly kind of beginning to end or do you work kind of Cubistly like ‘first this part of the canvas then that part of the canvas’, how does this sort of make its way onto the page for you?
CLAIRE-LOUISE: […] a bit like this Cubist thing you’ve just mentioned. And certain things y’know kind of sprout, in different places. And some of them would kind of spread a bit and touch the other sprouts and then they’d kind of make a big thing and you’d go “Ooo that is a bit like a story"“ (Laughs) “Maybe…” (Laughs). And then you’d think “Well that, that doesn’t want to get in touch with anything. That’s just what that is.” Like [the very short story] Stirfry. Right? So you just leave that. You leave that where it is. That’s like… Y’know, a little orchid [I think she said ‘orchid’?] or something. Or wants to be. So then you leave that. And then it was putting that together. […] And there really is quite a slow and long and slow and long (laughs) and slow and long process. And then things… It’s nice though. It’s nice.
This way of working sounds fun to me :)
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bizzarely I can’t find her particular episode of the podcast anywhere on the internet to link, but it comes up in my podcast app.