Andrew Sean Greer: How to Write Novels That Feel Real

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The highlight of this episode was hearing Andrew Sean Greer's story about what it's like to win the Pulitzer Prize.

He won it for a book called

00:00:31 Look for things that echo
00:03:51 Write scenes out of order
00:11:39 How to build a narrator’s voice
00:14:46 What to consume while writing
00:18:10 Steal from old books
00:24:05 Read like a detective
00:29:25 Forget the backstory
00:35:27 Stop trying to show off
00:39:44 Turn tragedy into comedy
00:46:56 Getting rejected 12 times
00:49:05 Winning the Pulitzer
00:53:30 What makes you an artist
00:58:41 How writers make money
01:01:48 What details to annotate
01:04:08 Good vs bad travel writing
01:06:55 How poetry improves prose
01:09:42 Ignore editors’ advice

David (00:31-00:37)

I want to start with the idea of looking for things that echo in editing. Tell me about that.

Andrew (00:37-02:47)

My first drafts are absolutely terrible. For example, with my new book, Villa Coco, I wrote many vignettes out of order, then pieced them together. When I review it myself, before an editor is involved, the easiest thing to spot is what images repeat.

If I see a bird story, a bird metaphor, and then a lot of birds in the sky at the end, I’ll think, “Okay, let’s remove all the porcupine stories and add more birds.” Readers enjoy a discernible pattern, even if they can’t consciously identify it. It should feel intentional.

I typically don’t know the theme yet. It’s usually in the second draft that I figure out what I’m truly talking about and what is entirely off the mark. Anything off-topic has to go. For instance, in Villa Coco, I had a wonderful story about a 17th-century fraud in Venice. It was hilarious, but it wasn’t what the book was about. The novel truly explores what to do with your life. While it touches on fraud and crime, that particular story missed the mark, so it had to go.

It means looking at even a lovely piece of writing and removing it if it doesn’t resonate with the rest. A novel must “rhyme”; everything needs to feel like part of a cohesive whole. For a 250-page novel, especially, the reader should finish feeling that everything happened for a reason.

Consider sitting with a friend who says, “I have to tell you what happened today.” If it’s just a dream they had, it’s not interesting because there’s no point. But if they’re a good storyteller, and they start with, “The milkman was late,” you expect the milkman to be important. If he isn’t, you feel annoyed.

David (02:48-03:10)

I understand that your early drafts are intuitive, almost ethereal, coming from the subconscious. The conscious mind intervenes later. You seem surprised to find themes that emerged without your conscious will. It’s almost as if you’re asking yourself, “Where did these come from?”

Andrew (03:11-03:51)

I don’t want to sound too much like David Lynch; he thinks in a more magical way than I do. My first draft is definitely a comprehensive dump of everything I could possibly use. I spill every story or character onto the page, wondering if it will be useful.

They say you should “write on whiskey and edit on soda water.” When I go through it a second time, I realize what the subconscious was truly trying to convey. All the rest is just material the conscious mind can shape into a theme, a story, and something that will move a reader.

David (03:51-03:55)

I saw you describe it as writing like a crossword puzzle.

Andrew (03:55-03:56)

That was Nabokov.

David (03:56-03:57)

Oh, really?

Andrew (03:57-04:52)

I thought he was lying; I believed it was nonsense to write like a crossword puzzle. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized it’s a very useful method.

I might write a scene, like one in Villa Coco about finding a work of art, two-thirds of the way through the book, without knowing where it goes. Then another scene occurs to me, like finding an answer. Similar to a crossword puzzle, you fill in what you know, which then provides clues to the intersecting parts. Slowly, they all connect and add up.

This is how I write my books. It sounds like madness, and it is, but it works better for me than planning everything out. Otherwise, I might have a nervous breakdown mid-novel because it veers in an unexpected direction, or the story feels too calculated, lacking an organic storytelling feel.

David (04:52-05:18)

When you write scene by scene, how does that look on a day-to-day basis? Are you swimming, and then suddenly you have an idea for a scene, so you go back to the computer to write it out?

I’m imagining these different splotches on a piece of paper – many unconnected dots, not arranged in order. You’re just trying to get ideas out, imagining various scenes. Is that a fair way to put it?

Andrew (05:18-07:26)

More that way. My friend Daniel, who I swim with, writes on index cards that he puts on his dining room table, much like Nabokov did. He writes full paragraphs on these index cards, not knowing what they’ll be about. I’ve seen it in action, and it’s true.

For me, I have a list of scenes I’m imagining for the book that seem fun to write. When I’m swimming, I brainstorm how I’m going to write each scene: what point of view, what details, what would be the most enjoyable approach.

You could tell a scene backward, for example. You might write, “Years later, he would look back on that moment and remember only the goat that was tied in the middle of the field. But when he first arrived that morning, he didn’t see the goat at all.” This allows you to foreshadow and tell the story from a future perspective, which can unnerve the reader. Or, you could simply write, “He walked into the room, and there was no goat there.”

I read many old books to understand how authors approached storytelling. I believe many techniques are lost today because if we only consume TV shows, we tend to write dialogue as if people enter a room, every detail unfolds, and then they leave. In a book, you don’t have to do that. You can simply report: “Tell me the truth. I told her exactly what she needed to hear.” You don’t need to include the actual dialogue; you can just report it.

These choices, which I’ve learned primarily from extensive reading, inform what I find fun to write. For instance, sometimes it’s more engaging not to tell the reader what someone says. I recently read a book by Beryl Bainbridge where, at the end of a chapter, she wrote, “I called up my mother and told her what had happened. My mother said what she always says. End of scene.” This leaves the reader wondering, which is quite effective.

David (07:27-07:38)

Could you give me other examples of older books you’ve read that showcase techniques different from how we write now? What are you trying to incorporate or draw inspiration from?

Andrew (07:39-10:19)

One example, which might seem foolish, but it was the first moment I realized you can do anything you want as a writer, came from an old novel by Colette, the French writer. It’s actually a novella called Gigi, which many people will know from the 1950s musical movie.

The story is about a courtesan who has been trained for the role. A man wants her to be his courtesan, but she refuses, which makes him very angry. He then returns to the house and tells her mother, Madame Alvarez, “I would love the great honor of asking for Gigi’s hand.” Colette understood not to add anything more; we knew he was asking for her hand in marriage. Any additional word would have made it too sentimental.

I was stunned. You can simply end a scene there, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. I thought you had to explain everything.

This realization showed me the true liberties of a novel, a kind of storytelling where the narrator and the writer are in control. It’s similar to theater, where imagination plays a huge role. No matter how elaborate the set, it’s still fundamentally a black box, and it’s often more fun when a simple chair can transform into a train or a hotel room.

Novels operate similarly; readers invent a great deal themselves. The more they invent, the more connected they become to the book and the more they enjoy the experience. However, this also makes for a more challenging read. As a writer, you must decide how difficult you want it to be, because many readers will reject a book if they have to imagine too much. Take the Beryl Bainbridge novel I’m reading now, for instance.

She doesn’t describe how the characters look, which is difficult for me since I enjoy doing so. She also doesn’t describe many of the rooms they inhabit. The book is set in a London theater in 1948, making it challenging to visualize the environment, but I recognize that’s part of the appeal. It’s a short book, so she won’t overload it with description. You gradually imagine the characters yourself. It took me a while to get into it, but now I’m truly invested because my version of Stella is unique; I’ve invented her completely.

David (10:19-12:02)

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As you think about the narrator, is the quality of that narrator something you explicitly write down? Do you have a big board, like Bradley Cooper in 21, looking over everything, mapping it out? Or is it a more intuitive sense of connection with your narrator, a deep intuition about what they would or wouldn’t say?

Andrew (12:02-13:39)

It’s a pile of books from my library that I believe my book sounds like a combination of. I don’t know why, but I have them there. I pick them up and read them until the combination starts to form.

I often have many false starts. For example, with my book, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, I must have written the first hundred pages three or four times. I’d try changing the character’s gender, shifting the narrative point of view, or experimenting with first-person from years later versus present tense. I kept getting it wrong, and I knew it. It wasn’t quick, but eventually, I hit on the right approach.

I know I’ve found it when I can produce many pages easily, and writing them becomes a pleasure, even if I eventually cut some. I particularly enjoy using a first-person narrator because it allows for rich personality development.

In Less, for instance, the narrator is why I enjoyed writing the book so much. The narrator is not Arthur Less; they are much smarter and funnier, and they know it’s a comedy. Arthur Less, on the other hand, doesn’t realize it’s a comedy. He’s often quite upset and having a bad time. But as readers, we have a good time because the narrator understands how the story will end. That’s an essential part of comedy: knowing that things will ultimately turn out okay, which allows the story to be funny.

David (13:39-13:43)

You’re describing voice, personality, and distinctiveness. How do you cultivate that?

Andrew (13:44-14:45)

I read extensively, seeking inspiration without imitation. In Less, for example, the narrator possesses a highly cultivated English vocabulary. I often had to look up words because he knows more than I do, which was fun. It made me sound smart, even though I frequently consulted the dictionary to find the precise words he would use. I believe the language itself contributes to the humor because he’s so overwrought.

However, that style wasn’t appropriate for Villa Koko, which features a different narrator. He’s an older man reflecting on his time at 21 or 22. This is distinct from observing someone else. You can poke fun at your past self, but you also feel great empathy for that younger person you barely recognize. That creates a different emotional landscape. The language choice was much simpler, and the storytelling was less antic.

David (14:46-15:09)

What you’re describing reminds me of how a designer creates a mood board. I’ve even heard filmmakers discuss creating a specific playlist for a movie, then listening to it repeatedly. This gives them a keen sense of the story’s vibe and tenor. Even if they can’t articulate it, they intimately understand the feeling.

Andrew (15:10-15:25)

When I’m writing a book, I become completely attuned to what will help me, whether it’s movies, plays, or music. I’ll stop watching a movie if I realize it’s not serving my purpose. For example, Jaws 3D is generally not helpful.

David (15:26-15:27)

It could be.

Andrew (15:27-15:50)

I never know what might inspire me. It’s not about high or low art; it’s simply about what storytelling resonates as interesting. This isn’t limited to books; I seek out any kind of storytelling.

I do start collecting these elements. I know writers who curate playlists specifically for their books, and while I’m not that kind of writer, the approach makes sense.

David (15:50-16:07)

I’m hearing that you have two distinct approaches to consumption. First, you consume what genuinely interests you. But when it’s time to start writing, you commit to a specific direction, and you only consume things that further that path.

Andrew (16:07-16:58)

Yes, it’s quite frustrating for my husband. He might want to watch Scream 7, but I’ll insist we watch another Bergman movie, which he usually refuses. This means I miss out on a lot of contemporary literature. While wonderful, it’s often not helpful for my specific work, as I tend to be more old-fashioned in my preferences.

I often find myself in a secondhand bookstore, browsing. Sometimes I pick up a book I’ve never heard of and immediately sense it could be what I need. For instance, I’m currently reading a Beryl Bainbridge novel for my next book – even though I said I’d never write another novel, which clearly isn’t true. A friend recommended it, and as I read, I feel a strong pull, thinking, “Yes, there’s something here. Something important.”

David (16:58-17:00)

What are your favorite bookstores?

Andrew (17:00-18:09)

I adore Green Apple Books because they wonderfully mix used and new books. That approach makes perfect sense to me. While there’s an obsession with new releases—buy my new book, by the way—I believe writers don’t necessarily need to focus on every book that just won the Booker Prize.

The risk is that you might end up sounding like everyone else in your field or generation. The goal is to sound distinctly like yourself. That’s the only true path to creating art: to be as authentically yourself as possible. This means being open to whatever inspires you, without embarrassment, because it’s your craft. You don’t have to read the newest translation of The Odyssey just because book clubs are reading it. Although, that actually sounds like a good idea, so maybe you do!

David (18:10-18:13)

Tell me more about your preference for older books compared to new ones.

Andrew (18:13-19:39)

Many forms of storytelling, especially from books no longer widely read, are lost to us. These old novels contain many forgotten literary inventions. For instance, old French novels might begin, “Madame M. _____ arrived at the city of V on May 12th to meet the Duke.” You wonder, “What’s with the underdashes? I’ve never seen that.” I consider if I want to use such a technique in my own novel, though I doubt anyone would understand it now.

However, in Villa Coco, I employed a similar method by not revealing the narrator’s name until the very end. He’s called by a nickname, Joe V. His real name is withheld, much like the narrator in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Most people know the movie, but if you read the book, you realize you never learn her name; she’s simply “the second Mrs. De Winter.”

This choice by the author is fascinating. It subtly hides the character, adds a touch of suspense, and creates a sense that perhaps the events truly happened, with identities obscured to protect someone – which, of course, is literary artifice. This blend of techniques, rarely seen in contemporary literature, is something I enjoy reviving.

David (19:39-20:36)

Looking at art history, whether from the 16th, 17th, or 18th century, reveals that the time and place a work of art was created are often more influential than the artist themselves. The stylistic difference between two artists in the 17th century is typically less pronounced than the difference between art from the 17th century and art from the 21st century.

Each era possesses a distinct spirit. It’s only by examining older art that you realize the homogeneity in contemporary creations. This isn’t a fault of our own, but simply a product of living in the current age. What I understand you to be saying is that if you’re seeking new ideas or ways to make your work distinctive, you should explore older material. Those periods offered entirely different approaches to seeing, thinking, and expressing themselves, whether about character, story, or whatever the subject may be.

Andrew (20:36-21:06)

Absolutely. If you want to write a novel that is a huge rant, you should read Philip Roth. Even if you don’t always like him, as I sometimes don’t, that’s how you learn to write a truly effective rant. John Updike, on the other hand, is playfully descriptive with language in a way I find very funny. I was definitely inspired by that for Less, by Updike of all people.

David (21:07-21:10)

These are the words you always return to: playfulness, joy, delight.

Andrew (21:10-21:35)

I appreciate those qualities. Dave Eggers once said that what he loves in a book is a surprise on every page. He means a surprise in description, language, dialogue, plot, or character – any of those elements. The key is a constant sense of novelty. Even Marcel Proust, whom many consider boring, offers a surprise on every page.

David (21:35-21:42)

Raymond Chandler, when writing, required something to happen on every single page before he removed the paper from his typewriter.

Andrew (21:42-22:03)

I heard that whenever he got bored, he would send two men with guns through the doorway. When you read his books, you might think he got a little bored at times. Yet, he truly crafted those novels; they weren’t dashed off like Ellery Queen novels. Each one of Raymond Chandler’s works is spectacular literature.

David (22:03-22:31)

I’m not suggesting everyone should always write this way, but there’s value in consistently demanding that something significant happens within a short timeframe. I recently attended a wedding where the best man delivered one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. He used about 25 index cards, reading each one in succession. Every index card contained a cohesive story, and the rapid-fire of funny stuff was so high. Wow, that’s a great story.

David (22:33-22:39)

It simply came down to his speech writing method being the exact opposite of what everyone else did.

Andrew (22:39-23:34)

He didn’t have to deal with transitions, which are often the hardest part. He smartly did away with them, avoiding the boring connective tissue. You can just get to the good stuff.

That’s why in my books, like Villa Coco, someone once told me, or I read online, that it doesn’t have any chapters. I initially thought, “Of course, it does.” Then I realized, “No, not in the traditional sense.” It’s not structured like Frog and Toad Are Friends. Instead, it uses sections separated by a small flower or similar emblem, varying in length from very short to very long. This allows me to avoid transitions, using white space to move seamlessly between topics. I don’t want to write something like Middlemarch, where it’s, “Later in the day, Dorothea thought she would pay a visit to the tenant farmer.” I avoid that approach.

David (23:34-23:44)

There’s a profound point here: If you enjoy writing in a particular way, find a structure that accommodates that style, rather than feeling constrained by how you believe writing should or needs to be.

Andrew (23:44-24:04)

This, again, comes down to reading widely and finding the structure that genuinely works for you. It’s not about choosing the most popular book’s style, or even your favorite book’s, but rather discovering what truly suits your writing. I think Kurt Vonnegut, of all writers, taught me how to write in short, discrete pieces.

David (24:04-24:15)

What I’m hearing is that writing serves as a way to expand your horizons, to encounter things that make you think, “Oh, I can write like that? I can do that?”

Andrew (24:15-25:12)

It takes reading in a different way—like a detective. If you really enjoyed something, stop and think: How did they do that? How did they pull that off?

Cormac McCarthy, for instance, doesn’t use quotation marks in his dialogue. That’s a particular choice; it’s very distancing, very cold. That works in his writing, but it wouldn’t work in my writing where I’m trying to keep it warm. I like quotation marks.

Jose Saramago doesn’t even separate dialogue from the rest of the paragraph or use quotation marks. You’re doing all the work; it’s all integrated. While that’s fun, I think it lends itself more to a fairy tale style. Ultimately, you need to see what works best for you personally and for the specific book you’re writing.

David (25:12-25:26)

From doing over a hundred episodes of this podcast, I’ve learned that most really good writers—not all, but most—simply have far more to draw upon than the average writer because they’ve consumed so much.

Andrew (25:26-25:49)

I need to watch those hundred episodes because I still panic in front of the page every day. I want to know what those other writers said. I don’t know how it’s made, but it’s true.

I’m not the fastest reader, but I’ve trained myself to do this: to pay attention, to learn from all these other works.

David (25:49-25:52)

I love that: training yourself to pay attention.

Andrew (25:52-26:31)

Exactly. I no longer get to read a book like Lord of the Rings and just think, “Oh, what a fun adventure these hobbits are facing.” That pleasure is gone.

Instead, I read it and analyze: Why is this song here? Do I like it? What is it doing for the book? Is it boring me? It used to bore me when I was twelve, but now I understand it’s part of building the magic. I want to know how it’s made because I’m going to have to create something in literature later that day.

David (26:31-26:49)

Implicit in that is the understanding that just because Tolkien did something doesn’t mean it’s perfect in every way. What you’re saying implies, “This might be a great book, it might have stood the test of time, but I don’t like this particular thing Tolkien did here. Why don’t I like it?”

Andrew (26:49-28:10)

Take Proust, my favorite writer, though I’m not imitating him. In the first volume, there’s a long, incredibly boring speech by a priest about the church’s stones, spanning perhaps 50 pages. When teaching my class, I’d say Proust wants you to experience every possible human emotion, and one of them is boredom, which you will experience in real time.

I wouldn’t do that myself; it’s not a technique I’d use. But he employs other techniques that I do find useful. He has a specific way of creating a sentence—and this is in translation, so I don’t know the original French—where he might say, “It then was awakened in me like a bird awakened by a false sun who takes flight, that impossible thing: the past.” He builds this long, elaborate sentence, then uses a colon to deliver the punch.

I found that incredibly powerful. You can only do that once or twice in a book. He does it thousands of times in a very long book, but I took that away as a great way to construct a powerful sentence.

David (28:11-28:52)

I was talking to Lee Child, who wrote all the Jack Reacher books, and I asked him if he outlined. He said no. When I expressed surprise, he simply said, “I just write.”

There was an interesting back-and-forth in the YouTube comments, of all places, essentially saying, “You guys are missing the point.” He might not consciously outline, but his mental bank of references from reading and writing thousands of books means he has an intuitive sense of what to do. Of course he’s outlining, just not consciously. Something is happening in his brain that’s different from a novice who meticulously outlines. These are not the same things.

Andrew (28:53-29:25)

It’s like watching a horror movie: there’s action, and then a moment where the monster is at bay. They’re trapped in a graveyard, sitting, and one turns to the other and asks, “So, what was your childhood like?”

You need that moment, probably twice in the movie, to connect the characters. A meticulous student might pinpoint it at exactly 35 and 52 minutes. But when you’re writing, you probably just instinctively think, “It’s time for a little chill-out moment.” You just know.

David (29:25-29:28)

How has the way that we talk about character changed over the centuries?

Andrew (29:29-31:26)

From my MFA school experience, and what I occasionally see online, character discussions often feel influenced by method acting, suggesting you must write out everything a character has ever done. I don’t find that to be true.

I wonder what they did in the 19th century. Characters in those longer books were often built from extensive detail. It’s like how Stephen King writes, providing pages about what a sheriff did in Texas twenty years ago. We don’t typically do that anymore, though King and Anne Rice certainly did.

In literary fiction today, I think we’re expected to capture a character instantly, in just a few sentences. This means you either arrive incredibly prepared, or you stumble through the first draft, discover the character, and then go back and remake them.

What I find is that a character either leaps instantly onto the page, requiring no further work, or they never truly come alive for me. In the latter case, I must use my skills to make them live for the reader, even if they don’t for me. That’s simply part of the job, and I know how to do it.

It’s about distinctive ways of talking, and how they think about things, rather than just how they move. It’s not about giving them a complicated past, or endlessly adding to their backstory, as we often assume. It’s about making them a real person you’re encountering right now.

I don’t mind being alone at a bar with a pad of paper.

David (31:26-31:27)

It’s the best.

Andrew (31:28-31:29)

I love sitting at the bar.

David (31:29-31:32)

Last night, I sat at the bar, had a burger, and met some characters.

Andrew (31:32-31:58)

It’s my favorite. I really like people. I think life is made up of other people, so you might as well get used to them. They’re also useful for writing, as long as you have a pad of paper. Otherwise, I’ll forget. I can write down not just the stories they tell you, but also the way they move and talk and what they’re wearing. It’s really great.

David (31:58-32:05)

When you meet a character, there are often very vivid little details about them that just encompass who they are.

Andrew (32:05-32:34)

Yes, and it takes nothing at all on the page. If that person was vibrant for you, you can put them in your book. They don’t have to be the bartender; they could be a maid in a 19th-century book. But that person, with whatever their bug eyes and mole here, will be alive to you, and that’ll make it really easy to write them. People who are really welcoming, people who are not at all welcoming — I kind of like those. I kind of like the people who are a little off-putting.

David (32:35-32:35)

Tell me more.

Andrew (32:36-33:25)

Well, if a bartender doesn’t want to serve you or is gruff, it means that in the scene, you could turn them around a little bit. That gives them more action than someone who says, “Hello, darling, how are you doing? What’s your name?” You’re already there. But if you have to persuade them—and in real life, I often never persuade them; they’re never into me—you want something to happen in the dialogue.

But you don’t have to. You can have something happen in the background. You can have a cat in the bar trying to make its way across behind the bottles to the other side. If it makes it to the other side, you feel like something happened in the scene, even if it’s undetermined. Something has to happen in every portion, but it doesn’t have to be what you think it is.

David (33:25-33:29)

Why do you keep coming back to surprise as the thing in every scene?

Andrew (33:29-34:10)

You want them to turn the pages, even in literary fiction. People won’t read it if they don’t turn the pages. Yet, what they’re coming for isn’t plot; what they’re coming for are paragraphs of beauty, wisdom, and poetry. But they won’t read just huge blocks of those. So, you have to use these other techniques to get them to turn pages so they get to those blocks of poetry. Then, when they finish the book, they’re like, “You have got to read this book!” And it’s this beautiful paragraph, something they would never have gotten to if you hadn’t put it in a diamond heist.

David (34:10-34:14)

Is creating drama and suspense something that you go for?

Andrew (34:15-35:27)

Yes, for sure. I don’t think of myself as a Hitchcock genius of suspense, but there are many ways to create suspense narratively that aren’t necessarily about a bomb about to go off in five minutes. You can even start the novel by saying, “I died on the 24th of December. I cannot explain to you how I’m able to communicate this to you from the other world, but I will start at the beginning.” And you think, “Oh my God, he’s going to die. How does this go?” Then you’re fine.

In fact, there’s a novel called The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, which is a Brazilian masterpiece. Brás Cubas. And it starts that way. You think, “What?” This is a novel from the early 20th century, and it does this at the beginning. He’s speaking from the afterworld, saying, “It’s too complicated to explain how, but I have to tell you about my life.” It’s The Posthumous Memoirs in Portuguese, and we’ve never heard of it, but it’s so crazy. I like those; that’s surprising to me.

David (35:27-35:29)

What’s this “throw with your left hand” advice that you got?

Andrew (35:29-36:32)

This was great. I was in graduate school and very pretentious and show-offy. I was a young writer who wanted to show off what I could do. I would write obscure stories with aliens, or 17th-century aristocrats and robots, just to try to be postmodern or something. Everyone hated them.

They asked me to write a realistic story, and I said, “All right, I’ll show them.” I wrote a story about a gay man and a lesbian who get married in the 1960s as beards for each other, and their marriage over the next 30 years and how they really become each other’s true love. I brought it in, and everyone loved it. I thought, “I showed them! They don’t know that I was just kidding.”

My professor, William Kittredge, a Western writer, a cowboy Western writer, took me into his office. He told me some baseball story. I don’t recall who was a famous left-handed pitcher.

David (36:32-36:33)

Whitey Ford.

Andrew (36:34-38:01)

Whitey Ford. All he said was, “Whitey Ford always threw with his left hand.” It took me a while to understand what he meant: “You’re good at this, Andy. You’re showing off with all this other stuff, but this is what you’re good at. You’re good at emotion.” It’s not shameful to do what you’re good at; in fact, it’s the only thing there is to do.

Maybe I wanted to be the cleverest writer in America, and I just wasn’t going to be. I was going to be a vulnerable writer, and that’s the last thing you want to be at 23. But I really understood what he was saying to me. That was the first short story I ever published.

I think about it a lot. Less, that book was a comic novel, and it turned out I was good at that, which I didn’t know. My last two books, Villa Coq and Less, are comic novels. I wonder, “Am I allowed to write these still?” There aren’t a lot of literary comic novels out there. But then I think, “Whitey Ford pitched with his left hand.” You get to pitch with your left hand if this is what you’re good at. The pages are coming. If you’re enjoying it, if readers are enjoying it, that is the whole point.

David (38:02-38:50)

There are four ways to think about competence: unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, consciously competent, and unconsciously competent.

Often, the things we are consciously competent at are a result of hard work. We can say, “I’ve worked really hard to get good at that.” However, the things we are unconsciously competent at come so naturally that we often don’t even admire them in others or ourselves. Consequently, we don’t utilize those strengths. People in any craft can improve by becoming conscious of their natural competencies, actively pursuing them, and learning to appreciate those abilities.

Andrew (38:51-39:44)

That’s exactly it. It feels easy, like anyone can do it, but that’s not true. It’s just what you can do. When something feels easy, it may not seem like art, but it is. It doesn’t have to be a struggle; it can be a pleasure.

Writing Vila Coco was a pleasure. I’m old enough now to say that I’m going to have a great time doing what I know I’m good at. It feels easy, but I’m aware that my peers don’t write this way, and I don’t know if they can. So, this is my niche; it’s perfect for me.

David (39:44-39:54)

From what I’ve read, you seem to have picked up on the idea that a lot of comedy comes from tragedy. Instead of dwelling on how sad a situation is, the tragedy can become funny.

Andrew (39:54-42:45)

Yes. You have to consider the hardest things for you and see if you can make them into a funny story. If you can, it’s powerful. Paul Beatty’s book, The Sellout, for instance, is about slavery returning, which is not a funny subject. Yet, he makes it incredibly funny. It dealt with something profoundly difficult for him, and he won the Booker Prize for it.

I learned a similar lesson while writing Less. Initially, I was working on a very serious, tedious, self-pitying book about a middle-aged gay man in San Francisco. I couldn’t write it. Then, out of desperation, I had the thought: What the hell, I’ll just make fun of him instead. That shift opened every door because I was writing about things that were genuinely hard for me.

At one point early in the book, it says, “Arthur Less was the first homosexual ever to grow old.” I find that a funny sentence, partly because the word “homosexual” itself feels somewhat anachronistic. Instead of saying he felt like the oldest, it declares he was the oldest. This is really about the fact that almost all the men in the generation above him died of AIDS. He had no examples of how to navigate turning 40, 50, or 60. Witnessing those men die was one of the greatest tragedies of my life; I escaped it only because I was just young enough. Still, it’s a funny sentence.

I’ve learned that in comedy, you have to touch on those hard things quickly, at least for me. You hint at them, making the reader realize we’re having fun but discussing something serious. My goal is to lead the reader through the fire, distracting them as we navigate difficult territory, so we emerge on the other side. But occasionally, you must pause and acknowledge what we’re experiencing.

Joan Rivers famously illustrated this. While telling a ridiculous Helen Keller story, someone yelled, “That’s not funny!” She replied, “My mother was deaf. What do you think comedy is about? Comedy is about taking us to the hardest things of our lives, together, and looking at them.”

Another comedic cliché is that it’s all about timing, which means there’s a lot of revision involved in perfecting even the smallest moments.

David (42:46-42:54)

How does that work on the page? It’s very clear to me how that works when you’re seeing stand-up comedy or something similar. How do you convey timing on the page?

Andrew (42:54-43:45)

You work with words to either delay something or speed it up. For instance, at the end of Less, my friend Daniel, a very funny writer, told me that my last 20 pages needed to be cut down to eight. I kept cutting, but I felt I couldn’t make it any shorter because the character was in Japan and needed to fly back to San Francisco for the final scene.

Daniel said, “Andy, you don’t have to write him getting on a plane. You can just write: ‘Next paragraph. He stood at his house.’” I needed that acceleration. The scene wouldn’t have been funny or moving unless I picked up the pace. This kind of timing is achieved grammatically in comedy.

David (43:45-43:58)

How much of your great comedy writing comes from that initial first pass, where the ideas simply pour out onto the page, versus the extensive revision process required to get it just right?

Andrew (43:58-44:03)

The funny stuff is all in the first pass.

David (44:03-44:08)

Why is that true for comedy—that it’s in the first pass—when you talk so much about the importance of editing in other parts of a novel?

Andrew (44:09-45:28)

I’m not a witty person; I lack a quick wit. I’m someone who thinks of the right thing to say as I’m leaving a party—the “l’esprit d’escalier.” I’ll think, “Oh, I wish I had said that!” That thought usually comes only two minutes later. At a writer’s speed, two minutes is fast; it’s not very long. This allows me to capture it on the page and have fun.

During revision, I often realize I’ve set up a joke without even knowing it. Then I can make it land, like in Less Is Lost. There’s a scene where he’s in the desert with hippies who built a rickety “universe appreciation platform.” Later, he inadvertently eats blueberries laced with mushrooms and embarks on a psychedelic trip.

In the original version, he woke up naked in a teepee. For the final version, I realized he had to wake up on that Universe Appreciation platform. Why else had I placed it there? It’s much funnier if he’s naked on that platform, unable to get down. That’s significantly better than just a teepee.

I wrote it for myself; it was all there, I just needed to see it later. This happens constantly: I set up a joke, but I haven’t finished it.

David (45:28-45:39)

You were talking earlier about learning from other writers throughout history. What comedy writers have you learned from that you’ve then incorporated into your writing?

Andrew (45:41-46:56)

These may not sound like comedy writers, but in the 1950s and ‘60s, many literary figures we consider great and important also wrote comedies. It was simply part of being a writer then.

Updike, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow were all comedic writers. Playwright Thornton Wilder wrote farces. All of this was considered a normal part of being a serious writer. I enjoy reading their work.

I also enjoy many early 20th-century British writers who aren’t laugh-out-loud funny but possess a certain charm. American readers rarely read these books. This is a good example of seeking out literature others overlook.

Take Nancy Mitford’s novels—hardly anyone has heard of her. Or Gerald Durrell, famous in England for My Family and Other Animals, but practically unknown here for Villa Coco. These were the books I turned to for a very gentle kind of comedy. They’re harmless, and I’m constantly delighted by them.

David (46:56-47:07)

Talk to me about the transition into Less, into being a comedy writer, and losing your British publisher.

Andrew (47:08-47:14)

Oh, yes. I don’t know why I laughed.

David (47:14-47:15)

Tragedy leads to comedy.

Andrew (47:15-47:34)

Well, I wrote Less. The book before that, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, was barely reviewed and certainly not purchased by readers. It felt beneath notice, and I’m too sensitive to such things. I thought it was all over for me as a writer.

David (47:34-47:35)

That was your fourth or fifth book at that time.

Andrew (47:36-49:05)

It was my fifth book, fourth novel. I thought, “Well, that’s it.” I was 46 or something, an “old man,” and I’d written a book beneath notice. I figured I was simply out of the club, which liberated me to write anything I wanted.

So I wrote this comedy, assuming no one would ever read it. I included things that were far too personal, things people shouldn’t know about my life. I’m glad I did, because it turns out people don’t care about my life; they enjoy the novel itself.

Usually, when a novel is published in America, a British publisher picks it up for publication there too. I had that arrangement for all my previous books with Faber, but they declined to publish Less based on the sales of my prior book. They weren’t thinking, “We’re investing in you for a lifetime.” No, they were effectively kicking me loose—and so did 11 other British publishers.

I never found a British publisher for Less. It came out in the United States with no British publisher until the day after I won the Pulitzer Prize, about ten months later. A significant amount of time had passed, and then they all wanted to publish it. Can you imagine a more satisfying moment?

David (49:05-49:07)

So what is it like winning the Pulitzer?

Andrew (49:08-49:10)

What was the day—

David (49:10-49:15)

—like when you found out? “Oh my goodness, I just won!” What happens in the aftermath?

Andrew (49:16-49:20)

I was working in Tuscany as director of an artist residency.

David (49:20-49:22)

That place looked cool.

Andrew (49:22-51:38)

It was pretty cool. Some dogs were roaming free, and Margaret Atwood was coming, which was a big deal. I thought, “These pugs shouldn’t be pooping all over the dining room floor—not the table, of course—when Margaret Atwood is here.”

So I bought diapers from China that had suspenders. Pugs have no waist, and I discovered the diapers wouldn’t stay on. I was training the pugs to wear diapers that evening. I put them to bed around ten o’clock. The time difference is an important part of the story.

We also had no cell reception, so I wasn’t constantly checking my phone as we typically do now, because there was no point. My evening was taken up by the pugs and their diapers.

Then my boyfriend, who was also there, showed me his phone. It displayed a headline from the San Francisco Chronicle that someone had sent him: “Local Author Wins Pulitzer Prize: Andrew Sean Greer.”

I didn’t know when the Pulitzer was announced—it’s April 18th, by the way—so I just thought it was another day in spring. I simply said, “That’s not true.” It seemed very clearly untrue to me.

But when I looked at my phone, I was back in cell phone range. I had a million text messages, full of fireworks, dancing Spanish ladies, clownfish, and high heels—not very helpful texts.

I did have many calls from my good friend Michael Chabon, who had won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. I thought, “If there’s some sort of fraud or weird rumor, he’ll tell me the truth.” I didn’t want to get worked up about something clearly untrue, as I’d been fooled in the past.

So I called him, and he asked, “Andy, do you not know?” I replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Michael.” He asked, “Am I the first person to tell you?” Then he told me I had won the Pulitzer Prize. He then said, “Let me tell you two things: there is no downside, and now you can write any book you want.”

David (51:38-51:39)

Let’s go.

Andrew (51:40-51:43)

That liberated me to completely enjoy myself.

David (51:43-51:45)

That’s like tenure for writers.

Andrew (51:45-52:30)

Then Michael Cunningham, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hours, called me. He told me that all living Pulitzer Prize-winning writers contact the new winner. Donna Tartt, Jhumpa Lahiri, and other writers I hadn’t known reached out. You suddenly feel accepted. It was an incredible experience over those days to feel part of something.

Michael Cunningham advised me not to waste any time worrying about whether I deserved it. That thought hadn’t occurred to me yet, but I realized it wasn’t my job to decide. I wasn’t on the committee. I received the prize, and I wasn’t going to worry about whether a comic novel deserved to win a Pulitzer. That wasn’t my concern.

David (52:31-52:48)

What stands out about that story is that you wrote Less in a state of hopelessness and despair. You felt like you’d lost your touch as a writer.

Andrew (52:49-53:29)

Comedy often stems from such experiences, as Seinfeld would attest. He famously said that comedy is when you decide something is a funny story. Life itself isn’t funny, but you choose to frame your awful, miserable experiences as humorous when you recount them to friends at a bar. Their laughter provides a sense of catharsis.

Writing Less was a low point in my life. Winning that prize for it was incredible. It was supposed to be a book no one would even read, yet it became a bestseller for a year.

David (53:30-53:39)

What is your self-conception as an artist, as a writer? How do you think about what that means and what it is that you’re trying to do?

Andrew (53:39-55:34)

It’s interesting to consider myself an artist, but I do. I think this perspective comes from attending artist residencies, where I’m surrounded by painters, sculptors, and other artists. They definitely see writers as their peers, so I’ll embrace it. I wouldn’t have called myself an artist before, but with my writer friends, our lives are truly devoted to art.

We create things that may not be popular; their popularity is often accidental. Less was an accidental success. I was happy with that book before it was published because I felt I had brought the vision in my head to life as closely as possible. That’s all I wanted to do.

That’s the artistic sensation: a compulsion, and the ability, through great effort, to manifest it. It sounds like madness, like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, building a mountain out of mashed potatoes after a vision. That’s what it feels like. It’s madness to live with someone consumed by that, which is why Terry Garr leaves him.

There’s something in your head, and you simply have to make it. You grapple with the right materials and the execution, feeling that no one will understand until it’s complete. Then you make it, and often they still don’t understand, but sometimes they do. The real pleasure comes from having realized it as closely as possible. With Less, I was so happy before publication. I thought good reviews would be great, but knowing I never expected it to be a success, I truly just wanted that artistic sensation.

David (55:34-55:36)

What did you learn from the painters?

Andrew (55:36-56:06)

I learned about the need to let the lacquer dry. Their process is so similar to writing a novel that it’s wonderful to talk to them.

They’ll say things like, “I spent all day painting tiny little flowers in the upper right-hand corner.” I know exactly what they mean because I’ve spent all day replacing “dog” with “cat.” It’s a task that doesn’t feel artistic.

David (56:06-56:50)

That’s profound. Many imagine the work of an artist or writer as pure, uninhibited creation—like Jackson Pollock splashing paint or a singer pouring out emotion. But much of the work is actually super specific, technical, and intellectual. The outcome is art, but the day-to-day process often doesn’t feel like the cultural understanding of what an artist is.

Andrew (56:50-57:31)

That big surge of inspiration, when it just pours out, is lovely when it happens. But revision doesn’t feel like that at all. Revision feels very technical to me.

During revision, if a scene isn’t working, I have to technically figure out how to fix it: whether to cut it or move it somewhere else. For instance, looking at the rhyming and mirroring in the book, if a scene belongs here because there’s a donkey on page 30, then 30 pages from the end, there should be another scene with a donkey to match it. Now I have to reconnect everything to make it make sense. That does not feel inspirational; it’s very technical.

David (57:32-57:33)

Tell me more about the painters.

Andrew (57:33-58:29)

They’ll say, “I applied a whole coat of lacquer, and then I just had to sit and wait for it to dry.” That makes perfect sense to me. It’s like when I polish an entire scene; I can’t look at it again right away to adjust or critique it. I have to let it sit and leave my mind for a while.

Time and again, these parallels emerge. For instance, when you talk to painters or any visual artist—photographers, for example—they don’t care about their subjects. Even if their subjects are naked people in front of them, they care about light. Painters don’t care about their subject; they care about paint.

That absolutely makes sense to me. It sounds insane, but painters discuss the texture of the paint, its color, how it’s applied, how it dries, whether you use linseed oil—all these technical things. I think about words the same way.

David (58:30-58:40)

There’s a Picasso quote I really like. When art critics get together, they talk about form, structure, and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where to buy cheap turpentine.

Andrew (58:40-58:41)

Exactly.

David (58:41-58:45)

It’s the deep specifics. Also, just hanging out with artists here, they’re always talking about money.

Andrew (58:46-58:47)

Yes, they talk about…

David (58:47-58:57)

money more than finance professionals do. There’s an extreme pragmatism in their approach, which has really surprised me.

Andrew (58:57-59:03)

You would think they’d say, “Who cares about money, fame, or riches? Where’s the art?”

David (59:03-59:07)

They respond, “I need money to make my art. How do I find it?”

Andrew (59:07-1:00:08)

If they’re good professionals, they find grants or work with galleries. There are practical steps for all of that. The same is true for writers.

You might wonder how Less came about. I was a travel writer for years. I would come to New York, needing to make money somehow. I had a friend, a former student, who was an intern at Travel + Leisure. I told her, “I want you to introduce me to your editor.” She replied, “He won’t meet with just any writer.”

I insisted, “It doesn’t matter. I just want to go to lunch with you, and you can introduce me as I pass by.” I dressed in the loudest colors I possibly could. My friend introduced me: “This is my friend Andy.” He was on the phone, so that was it.

My thought was, one day they’d be in a meeting and say, “So-and-so can’t write this piece.” My friend would then suggest, “What about my friend Andy?” “Who’s he?” they’d ask. “You know, the guy in the bright clothes.”

That’s exactly what happened. I had to be very cunning because you have to eat.

David (1:00:08-1:00:13)

This leads me to ask, what career advice do you have for writers?

Andrew (1:00:15-1:01:47)

I highly recommend life experiences. This could mean pursuing a different, interesting career as your day job—one that provides stories and interactions with many people. You don’t have to be a big drinker and frequent bars, but that’s one example of paying attention.

I suggest replacing your iPhone with a pad of paper of the exact same size. When you’re bored waiting for the bus, truly pay attention to your surroundings.

My career advice is this: you’re going to have to make money. You’ll probably never make a substantial income from your writing, so find something or someone to support you at a minimum level. If you have expensive tastes, good luck.

The other thing to understand is that there’s no “champagne room” you’ll eventually be invited into, where all the VIPs sit around and declare, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” There’s no heaven; there are just writers.

Perhaps the closest I’ve come to a “champagne room” was Donna Tartt emailing me pictures of her pug. But there’s no exclusive room, no separate existence. It’s still hard work, and there’s no private club. Every writer is interesting to me, regardless of their career stage, as long as they’re honest when discussing their work.

David (1:01:48-1:01:57)

Take me back to when you were a travel writer. You would go to different places and only write about experiences you actually had, correct?

Andrew (1:01:58-1:02:36)

I had notebooks, and those were my rules for Less and Less Is Lost: I couldn’t make up anything. Especially for travel writing, I didn’t want to. Plenty of people do, but I didn’t want to be, for instance, a white man making up stories about Vietnam. That would likely tap into some orientalist fantasy of mine, creating fabricated material that would be nonsensical and offensive.

I was also alone in a Vietnamese restaurant where my food took two hours to arrive. I took a lot of notes.

David (1:02:36-1:02:43)

If you’re at a restaurant in Vietnam, what sorts of things are you writing down?

Andrew (1:02:44-1:03:32)

Everything. I’d write down the brand of the air conditioning unit in the corner.

I remember one restaurant where the food was prepared up front, and the chef was boiling bones. He would shoo a dog to the back, and the dog would sit down and look at me. Then the waitress would come, shoo the dog back to the front, and he would sit there until he was shooed away again. It felt like a metaphor for something, perhaps something Buddhist—like, when would he be released from this cycle?

I also recall a parrot in a cage, incessantly talking in another restaurant. These are all details that made it into my novel because they feel significant; they are poignant and funny.

David (1:03:33-1:03:37)

If you were describing this room with a notepad, what would be the first three things you’d notice?

Andrew (1:03:37-1:03:48)

My favorite thing is that window, which is set at such an angle. They’ve remade it to look normal, but they can’t hide the fact that something has shifted over time. It looks like one of the houses...

David (1:03:48-1:03:51)

...in Snow White, doesn’t it? They’re kind of droopy.

Andrew (1:03:51-1:04:07)

It reminds me of my apartment in Venice, which is so wobbly that if I put my rolling chair down, it rolls across the floor as if by a poltergeist. These details make it human. I think, “Humans made this.” I’m looking for evidence of humanity.

David (1:04:08-1:04:13)

What is the difference between great travel writing and terrible travel writing?

Andrew (1:04:14-1:05:00)

You can identify terrible travel writing by asking AI to generate anything; it’s always full of clichés. As a travel writer, and also when I was writing Less and Less Is Lost, I always looked for the unexpected in a place—something that would make readers rethink their assumptions.

For example, in Morocco, Less visits a ski resort, which I was taken to and saw in the Atlas Mountains. I wasn’t expecting a ski resort in Morocco, but of course there is one; they have mountains. You want to move beyond the cliché. I had to write about camels and Bedouins, but I also needed something to broaden the perception of that country.

David (1:05:00-1:05:13)

So, the first point you’re making is about clichés. There’s a lot of cliché in travel writing, and you don’t want to lean into those. However, a superficial interpretation of your advice might suggest writing the exact opposite of the cliché, which is also probably...

Andrew (1:05:13-1:05:16)

...it could be misleading because it might not be representative of the place.

Andrew (1:05:17-1:06:28)

I remember one place we stopped where a little boy was selling chicks dyed bright pink. All the chicks had been dyed different colors. He was selling them because they were brightly colored, and of course, I wouldn’t want that. It’s going to turn into a chicken. But there was something amazing about it. I thought, “Whose idea was this?” This is someone’s idea. It must work. Someone’s buying these dyed chickens—tourists, maybe. It’s something that’s neither a cliche nor the opposite; it is something utterly itself and therefore interesting.

Again, in travel writing, for me, I’m writing about human beings. I’m not a nature writer particularly. I write about people, so I’m interested in how people vary and how they’re very much like us, actually. That’s what you find when you travel. That’s a cliche in and of itself, so you try to hide that, but you do find that people are poor and kind everywhere, and in very specific ways.

David (1:06:29-1:06:35)

With AI, are you thinking, “I will not touch it,” or will you incorporate it a little bit? What is your relationship with it?

Andrew (1:06:35-1:06:53)

It’s very simple: I am a representative plaintiff in a number of lawsuits against these companies. So I’m not allowed to use AI or talk about it, or else I’ll be deposed, and I don’t want to be deposed. I’ll stay out of court.

David (1:06:55-1:06:58)

Why do you keep poetry by you when you’re writing?

Andrew (1:06:58-1:07:47)

Because I think poets are the ones who go down in the mines, get the jewels, and bring them up. It’s like Indiana Jones. They do all the hard work; they bring out the golden idol, and I’m like the French bad guy who says, “Once again, Mr. Jones, what you have fought for is now mine.” I take their discoveries, which are narrative and language discoveries. I learn every time I read poems, just like reading old books, because they’re shortening everything down, condensing, mixing things, and using line breaks. It’s constant invention for a prose writer.

David (1:07:47-1:07:50)

Not always, but often both elevating your sense of what’s possible and expanding your sense of what you can do as well.

Andrew (1:07:50-1:08:29)

Yes, and it’s not to sound poetic. I’m in a poetry Zoom club that’s been going for years, every Friday, and we meet for an hour. It takes us months to get through a poem. I left the club after we started a poem by Wallace Stevens. I was gone for a month and came back, and they were only on stanza four. Most of us are poets, but there are also novelists, and I find prose answers to my prose problems in poetry.

David (1:08:29-1:08:36)

How do you read a poem? If we were sitting down to read a poem at lunch, and I said, “Hey, could we spend 30 minutes on this?” What would we do?

Andrew (1:08:36-1:09:41)

You read it all out loud, and then you think, “What’s standing out to me? Let me examine that more closely. Why is that interesting to me? What’s going on there? What am I resistant to? What am I enjoying?”

Now, I can usually tell right away in terms of prose answers. There’s a book called The Others by Matthew Rohrer. It’s a long series of poems, but it’s a prose piece—stories within stories, but not just in the Scheherazade way. Because it’s a poem, it teaches me something else about how, within a story, you can have someone telling a story, which happens a lot in my novel Villa Cocho. There’s this old woman, a baronessa, who’s telling these crazy stories, and I had to figure out how to work those in. I found them really fun, but I realized people might find them distracting because it’s no longer the plot. Don’t you hate it when they’re suddenly telling you a 40-page story, and you’re like, “But what happened to the cowboys?” So, I learned about that from his book.

David (1:09:42-1:09:47)

Let’s finish here with this advice from Daniel Handler: “The editor is the patient, and you are the doctor.”

Andrew (1:09:48-1:09:52)

That is one of the wisest things he ever said to me, and he has a lot of wisdom.

David (1:09:52-1:09:52)

What does it mean?

Andrew (1:09:53-1:11:37)

We think that the book is the patient, the editor is the doctor, and they know what to do. They’re going to say, “Nurse, here’s what I need you to do,” and you do it. But that is not true. The editor is the patient; they’re the reader. They know they’re feeling things, and they can come in. It’s like a patient who comes in and says, “Doctor, my arm hurts. I’m sure it’s arm cancer.” You, the writer, say, “There’s no such thing as arm cancer,” but the arm hurts. That’s important. I will figure it out.

The editor will not know the answer because the thing you want to make is in your head; they have no access to it. A good editor will not tell you specifically what to do; they will just tell you where it hurts. You could have a lot of people read your book, and if they consistently say where it hurts, please ignore the specific advice they give you. It’ll really throw you off, especially in a workshop. But they’re right about what’s not working.

I’ve said this in my classes: there will be a story about a middle-aged couple having marriage problems, and then a mermaid appears at the end. Everyone will say, “Cut out the mermaid; it doesn’t fit.” And I will say, “Or more mermaid,” right? The problem is it doesn’t fit, but the solution is not necessarily to cut out the mermaid. How about we prepare for the mermaid, buy more mermaid, commit to the mermaid, and less of the vague married couple? That’s not as interesting. The first instinct will be to make the work mediocre. As a writer, you have to think, “Should I actually commit to the thing that’s strange and putting the reader off?”

David (1:11:37-1:11:42)

And the first instinct will end up making the work more mediocre a lot of the time. Why?

Andrew (1:11:42-1:12:30)

Because it is getting rid of the thing that doesn’t fit. My editor, Leigh Boudreau, is the best in the world, God bless her. But she did suggest to me that I should cut the ending, which has a kind of revelation in it. She said, “We’ve had such a good time. We don’t want to risk spoiling it for readers who will be put off.” And I said, “I understand. It doesn’t work yet; I will make it work.”

I spent most of my time changing the rest of the novel so that the ending would land properly, which was a lot of work. But luckily, I was developed enough to know that her solution was definitely the easiest one, but it was not the right one. Thank you. That’s so fun to talk about that stuff.

David (1:12:30-1:12:31)

I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Andrew (1:12:31-1:12:36)

No one talks about that in interviews. They want to know where I grew up.

David (1:12:36-1:12:37)

I’m glad you enjoyed it.