Into the Weeds

An illuminating reflection on the creative process from acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, and translator Lydia Davis

When asked why she writes, Lydia Davis confesses that the question makes her uncomfortable. Maybe she would rather not know. Instead, Davis considers how she writes her stories, how other writers write, and what insights the how might provide into the why.

In this free-ranging exploration, Davis discovers that one reason she writes is for pleasure: the pleasure of encountering something that demands to be treated in language, of handling and manipulating the language into the form it ought to take, and, finally, of seeing a story exist where it didn’t exist before. As she observes the processes of some of the authors who interest her the most, she finds that there seem to be as many reasons to write as there are writers: to relive an experience, to share an experience, to articulate something one has not quite comprehended.

Reflecting on an eclectic mix of thinkers, including James Baldwin, Kate Briggs, Walter Raleigh, Christina Sharpe, Knut Hamsun, Grace Paley, Josep Pla, John Ashbery, and John Clare, Davis undertakes a clear-eyed, patient inquiry into the manifold reasons we choose to put pen to paper and begin something new.

Lydia Davis is an award-winning writer and translator. She is the author of Our Strangers, Essays One, and Essays Two. Her translations include Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Michel Leiris’s The Rules of the Game, Volumes 1-3. She lives in Rensselaer County, NY.