Sheila Heti at the Paris Review:
I think what confuses me so much about those who have prescriptions for how to write is that they assume all humans experience the world the same way. For instance, that we all think “conflict” is the most interesting and gripping part of life, and so we should all make conflict the heart of our fiction. Or that when we think of other people, we all think of what they look like. Or that we all believe things happen due to identifiable causes. Shouldn’t a writer be trained to pay attention to what they notice about life, what they think life is, and come up with ways of highlighting those things? The indifference to the unique relationship between the writer and their story (or between the writer and the reason they are writing), which is necessarily a by-product of any generalized writing advice, is part of what makes the comedy in this book so great. As a teacher, “Sam Shelstad” is so literal, and takes the conventions of how to write successful fiction on such faith, that when he tries to relay these tips to his reader, the advice ends up sounding as absurd as it actually is.
more here.
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