Write like Auster

Some ideas and challenges for our writer-readers

Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash

Welcome! If you’re new here, I’m Kathleen Waller and this is my newsletter about cultural studies, the arts, and writing. After four weeks of looking at Paul Auster’s oeuvre, today’s post is about using his work as inspiration for our own. If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see links to the Paul Auster series. Thanks for reading!

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Please sing the title of this piece to the tune of ‘Moves Like Jagger’ by Maroon 5 et al:

Did you do it? Out loud? There’s absolutely no rational reason for it. It just popped into my head, part of the lifelong real-life musical I sometimes think I’m a part of. Although, as we heard in one of the video interviews I included this past month, Auster does like to move around the room while he writes. So, maybe it’s more relevant than my strange brain connections.

There, now that that’s out of the way…at the risk of spending too many weeks with Paul Auster (is it possible?), we have one last week where I will lead you through some writing strategies and three prompts or challenges, depending how you see them.

First, a roundup of some takeaways you may have already discovered implicitly through the last few weeks’ investigations —

Write by hand or typewriter

Auster is perhaps famous for (still) writing on his typewriter. He also frequently writes by hand.

While it may not be practical to always do so, taking the time to slow down with writing in this way and to embrace the tactile nature of writing (if we are physically able to do so) can have several effects. We pay attention to particular words more carefully. We slow down the pace. We exchange information in our brain differently and process what we are writing as we are writing it differently. (Read the link to see research supporting the continuation of children learning handwriting, again when they are physically able.) Sometimes even just turning off your phone and your computer’s wifi can accomplish something like this task. That way, it is just you and the page. You have the answers.

Move around the room in the middle of composing

This is more difficult to do if you’re writing in a cafe or office! As I mentioned above, Auster talks about moving around his room during writing sessions. I mean, I think it’s only natural. It’s probably healthy for our legs, back, etc.. But also, the movement gives him ideas. It pushes words into his fingers. Give it a try if you don’t already.

Relatedly, simply turning your gaze out the window can have a great effect on your brain. I listened to a neuroscientist talk about this positive effect of looking out at the horizon. Try it; it’s relaxing. I try to do it in the middle of composing on a computer or by hand. It helps me take a breath and consider where things are going.

Don’t aim to do too much in one writing day

Auster also often talks about just writing a couple of pages in a day. I’m not sure this is always true, considering his prolific career and the length of his recent book about Stephen Crane. However, it seems he is satisfied with just a few pages. He must do some editing as he goes, or carefully considers the words he puts down from the start.

Of course, this isn’t the only way to do it or necessarily the best. Some might find it more effective to let your fingers flow with ideas and language all at once, then go back and cut and edit as you like. But maybe the best thing about this is to give yourself some kind of limit — time or page or word count — so that you leave your little writing space eventually and do some other things with your day as well.

Expand yourself through genre or text type

We’ve investigated Auster from a variety of angles. From his early days as poet and translator, to his large oeuvre of fiction, to his screenwriting and directorial debut, and finally to his non-fiction, including essays, memoirs, and a book of biography and literary criticism.

Why not try something else? Especially if you’re feeling stuck, or just because you fancy it, it might just be the project you need right now. This thriller I’m almost ready to send for query (!!) is a totally new genre for me. No matter what happens to book, I’ve loved diving into it. By writing something new, we also have to investigate the building blocks again, making us perhaps more aware of the choices we make as we write.

Try using critical theory to inform your writing

Ok, maybe Auster claims in some of the interviews we looked at that he is not interested specifically in poststructuralists or any particular kind of theory or philosophy.

Ha! It’s there. Even if he does it subconsciously, he’s playing with ideas that other critical theorists and philosophers have written about. Or maybe it’s coincidence. Still, it can help to prompt you to write some fresh ideas.

(Mr. Auster, if you ever read this, I mean no offense or do not want to start a fight. Instead, you are welcome to discuss it with me on the new podcast…please…)

Play around with pronouns

I don’t mean playing with pronouns in a 2020+ kind of way (I mentioned this interview in The New Yorker last month that you might want to check out if you are interested in thinking about the power of gendered and non-gendered pronouns, which might also apply to your characters or the people you may write about in non-fiction.).

Instead, we’ve looked at the way Auster has used second person in his memoir writing (“We are all aliens to ourselves.” / “The inventory of your scars, in particular the ones on your face, which are visible to you each morning when you look into the bathroom mirror to shave or comb you hair. You seldom think about them, but whenever you do, you understand that they are marks of life…” - both from Winter Journal).

He also writes in the third person about Paul Auster, especially in City of Glass, but he does this metafictional trick elsewhere, too. Try out different narrative perspectives for a story you’re already working on. It may seem like a lot of work to change it, but it’s worth it if it changes the whole feeling and perhaps even message of your story.

Be open to unexpected collaborations

Maybe Auster’s films didn’t get the best rating by the critics, but that’s not the only point, is it? He talks about these projects as teamwork. As getting away from the isolation of being a writer. And it was a dream of his to do it. He’s Paul Auster, so he just did it.

When Wayne Wang called up Auster about his Op-Ed in The New York Times, he said yes. This led to the sequel (written on set) and the ensuing film that again starred Harvey Keitel.

What else do you take away from Auster’s work or from my articles the last four weeks?

Challenges: write like Auster

1: Memories as any other human

Two weeks ago, we looked at the methods Auster uses to discuss his own life in memoir. One important idea he keeps coming back to is that he writes his memories as if they could be anyone’s. It’s seems paradoxical to bother to write about one’s life when one thinks it may be universal. Although Auster does not even choose to spend much time in his writing on the things that others might consider extraordinary.

Instead, things we may all experience: shame, laughter, grief, love…these are the things he shares with us through anecdotes.

Try writing in second person, about yourself. This will have the affect of perhaps at first disorienting the reader as well as dissociating yourself, perhaps giving you more liberties and distance in the way you address the memories.

If possible, choose a time from childhood that you can connect to something you’re going through right now. I don’t mean in a pyschoanalytical kind of way, unless you want to go there, which is fine! I don’t even mean it has to be pscyhologically connected in any way in a trauma informing sort of way (although it could be).

Instead, it might be symbolic — a playground accident from twenty or sixty years ago reminds you to get back up after failure.

Or it might be a parallel experience — recall a moment in your childhood at the same age as your own child or consider a moment in a classroom and now - if you are a teacher - consider some connected moment from the present (well, not this moment as you write, but you get what I mean).

Try to find human connection through your experience. Your experience is unique to you, but should connect to others. In fact, it will even if you don’t try to make it. But try to keep this idea in mind as you write. ‘I experienced this, but somebody else felt something like it when they went through a different experience.’ This is why it’s important to write it. Of course, that’s why it may be important to write it for others: we’re not just teaching about our own lives, no matter how (in)famous we might be.

And it’s also important to keep this aspect in mind even if we are just writing for ourselves. The act of writing connects us to all humans. We create tracings of ourselves. We are reminded that we are part of the universe in this way.

2: Write one great page

Not perfect. That doesn’t exist. But limit yourself to one page. It’s cheating if you change the font and spacing after! I don’t care what font and spacing you use, but just select it before you begin. Or write by hand or even typewriter if you like.

You can do this in medias res, that is, take a day of writing your novel/dissertation/or whatever you’re working on, and only allow yourself to write that one page.

Or, if you’re not in the middle of something or want to try something different, you can use anything you want or one of these prompts:

a. Use a phone call to spark a page of writing. It might just be a ring, or a buzz in someone’s pocket they secretly look at under the dinner table. It might be a whole conversation — expected, unexpected, scary, sweet, sad. I’m thinking of an old post I did on phone calls (it’s one of my favorites) and the first page of Auster’s City of Glass:

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

11. The Phone Call (everyday performances)

b. Write a page of only dialogue between two people who love each other but haven’t told each other yet. Maybe they’re fighting about something. Maybe they’re talking about the weather. Maybe one of them is being really annoying and trying to impress the other.

c. Describe your face. That’s it. Look closely or feel it with your fingers. Do it in narration or have a character describe it. Make it symbolic or completely aesthetic. I wonder what you’ll discover there.

3: Get outside yourself

Auster went through a revelation after attending a modern dance performance, although he can’t or won’t articulate exactly what it was about the show rationally that helped him. Suddenly, he was able to write prose again! He quickly finished a novel and was well on his way to becoming a successful author.

Photo by Andrés Gómez on Unsplash

It’s easy to get caught up in the rhythms of the days. Rhythm can be wonderful; it can help us relax and be productive and even to enjoy the little things we do each day or week. But sometimes, it’s good to shake it up, especially if we are feeling clouded by deadlines or word counts or whatever is blocking you at the moment.

So, this week, find something different you can do or go to. It doesn’t have to cost money — you could attend a free concert in a church or a free exhibit at a gallery. You don’t live in a buzzing city? No problem; watch something you wouldn’t normally watch, like a highly recommended film that’s something you would never choose yourself. Or try to craft something. Or learn how to do a headstand. Or paint your fingernails green.

Even better if someone invites you to do something a bit random or that you wouldn’t choose yourself…and you go, just for the hell of it.

Things I’ve done in the past few months that made me feel fresh and ready to write: crocheted a blanket after thirty years away from crocheting (it’s also something my grandmother had taught me to do and she died last year, so maybe I could write about it for prompt 1), painted an ensō, went to an exhibit of Wayne Thiebaud, taught myself to do a really crazy variation of dancer pose after watching a video of it on Instagram, bought (and wore) two denim jumpsuits…

I’m sure you can think of something to do this week! Do it. Then write. Not necessarily about it, but just write while your brain is all fresh and juicy from it.

Does this count as a prompt or writing challenge? I’m not sure, but I hope you enjoy it and it helps you with your practice.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please hit the like button or share it! Posts like this will be part of my Yoga & Writing project, coming in September. Patron subscribers will receive discounts on related courses.

Other Paul Auster posts in this series:

Paul Auster

Paul Auster: Bringing Theory to Life

Paul Auster: Truth is Tough, but Beautiful

Paul Auster & the Movies