Why Barbara Kingsolver Writes Standing Up
The Author of Partita Takes the Lit Hub Questionnaire
Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver, is available now from Harper, so we asked her a few questions about her writing life.
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What time of day do you write (and why)?
Once I’m seriously into a writing project, I tend to wake up before dawn with words flooding into my brain. I let them pool in there until it feels like they might leak out, then I run to my desk to start pouring them into the keyboard. I only break to go to the kitchen and refill my coffee cup, no other distractions until lunchtime. If things are going well, I’ll forget lunch and keep going until early evening. The flow state is so blissful, I forget that I have a body. Very often, my darling husband Steven will quietly deliver a sandwich to my desk. Otherwise I would surely have perished by now.
How do you tackle writer’s block?
When I’m trying to get a new book started, every single time, I somehow convince myself it’s the stupidest thing anybody has ever written. Ev-ver. It’s paralyzing. The only way out is to give myself permission to write a terrible first draft. Just do it! Badly! After all, nobody’s going to see it. It won’t leave my office until it has been rewritten a dozen or fifty times, slowly progressing from stupid to decent to the book I want it to be.
What’s the best or worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
Francine Prose gave me this, a very long time ago: “The first sentence (or paragraph) of a novel should make a promise that the rest of the book will keep.” It’s brilliant. It forces you, the writer, to get very clear with yourself about your intentions, right from the start. You will not be wasting the reader’s time. I will die on that hill.
What part of your writing routine do you think would surprise your readers?
I write standing up. I used to sit, like any normal desk drone, and I was plagued by terrible back problems for decades. Then the day came, two weeks before a drop-dead deadline on a final draft of a novel, when the pain was yelp-out-loud excruciating in any position other than lying flat on the floor, or standing. I rigged a prop-up thing for my computer and finished the book standing. It went so well, I ordered a proper standing desk, and have been pain free ever since. My last half dozen books have been produced by a woman entirely on her feet.
What was the first book you fell in love with (why)?
In the way-back of my family’s station wagon when I was nine, on one of those interminable vacations where the parents want the kids to behave while we drive a million miles to some Important Destination, I fell headlong into Little Women. I have a clear memory of waking up out of the book just long enough to look around and think: “I hope we NEVER get to the Grand Canyon.”
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Partita by Barbara Kingsolver is available from Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned a devoted readership. Her novel, The Poisonwood Bible, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Lacuna won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and Flight Behavior was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her body of work. Before she made her living as a writer, Kingsolver earned degrees in biology and worked as a scientist. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.
