72 Hours
By Pam HoustonSherman Alexie, Pam Houston and T.M. McNally answer the question: “What were we thinking?”
On February 13 at 7:30 in our Theater, the Hugo Literary Series will feature Sherman Alexie (“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”), Pam Houston (“Cowboys are My Weakness”) and T.M. McNally (“The Goat Bridge”) in an evening of risk taking and verbal derring-do. The premise? The writers will check into a hotel 72 hours before the event, and only then will they be given their assigned themes for the reading. Tickets are available at brownpapertickets.com. Below is an interview conducted by Pam Houston.
Why in the world did you say yes?
Alexie: I agreed to participate because it feels like one of the great artistic reality shows, like “Project Runway” or “Top Chef.” And because I'm a performer who often uses improvisation, this feels like an added level of challenge. How does one improvise for 72 hours straight?
McNally: I wanted to meet Sherman Alexie and I've been hearing all these wonderful things about Hugo House and, the real reason—it was far enough away on the calendar at the time for me to go, Okay, sure. I mean: If it had been Want to do this next week? Month? Year? I would have gone, Uh, all frozen, like I do when I'm asked out for lunch, and hide. I also liked the winking idea of it: the deadline. The almost-like-being-a -student all over again: 72 hours, or else. There's something oddly comforting (and safe) in having that sort of structure. Meanwhile I have no idea what is going to happen, or what I'll type, or not type. But change, writes Evelyn Waugh, is the only evidence of life. And this is a huge change for me, writing something like this, and getting on a plane to do it, and, despite the fact of the plane, etc, and given the company and atmosphere, it sounded like fun.
Houston: I love a deadline. I have often thought that if I only had someone standing next to me with a gun to my head I would be as prolific as Joyce Carol Oats…unless I spent all my time trying to fake out the guy with the gun pointed at my head. Seventy two hours seems like the absolute perfect amount of time for a person who writes, as I do, the way a bulimic eats. I can (and often do) throw in for 72 hours…with very little eating, sleeping or speaking to distract me from the task at hand. After that, I have to admit, some point of diminishing return kicks in. Hunger, exhaustion and the initial trappings of insanity begin to take over, and soon I am no use to anyone, but those first 72 or so can be really really productive.
Any lurking fears about how it might go?
Alexie: My biggest fear is that I'll gain 10 pounds in three days because of room service in the hotel.
Houston: There is only one fear and it has nothing to do with the 72-hour format, and I suspect it lives in the back of every writer's mind on any given day: I suck. And if I can amass a certain amount of evidence that I have not completely sucked in the past, I suck's second cousin: I will suck from now on, is never far behind.
McNally: I'm sort of an insomniac, and that's good for a day or two but after 72 hours in a foreign setting (no matter how pretty Seattle is) without my herbal tea and various accouterments? Not to mention I'm supposed to write something—and then show it!—within that sort of nonsleeping 72-hour window. It feels a little like going into a marathon, some sort of Iron Man Thing. I might write a story, but typically I don't show it to a soul for six or seven months until after it is finished. Also, what if I can't sleep? 72 hours? I'm not like most people who can sleep. The thought of not being able to sleep is starting to keep me up at night—
What is the relationship between time put in and quality in your work? Have you ever written anything really good, really fast?
McNally: Well, this is an interesting question: fast and light; slow and dark, all the possible variations. Italio Calvino writes about these matters beautifully. Here's my quick take: What appears to be fast is not and what appears to be slow may or may not be fast. When I work, 30 percent is just thinking, sort of preparing the sacred space of my all to simply receive, and that requires greats blocks of solitude and study and meditation and reflection. It can take years for me on certain projects. Then there is the writing phase, which is usually 10 percent of the final project; that is: the part people think of as The Writing does not for me represent as much actual time as it is probably thought to. Twenty to forty minutes a day, maybe; if I'm working on a novel, another 20 or 40 at the end of the day to copy it all down in longhand. This all the way to the end, which can take years, or months. Then there is the editing phase, which also will take years and months of study and reflection, so that when the final project is presented, it might look light and fast and graceful, but everything therein has been sculpted or shaped to fit the luxury of its central purpose.
Here's the thing: it doesn't matter how fast it comes out of the gate. A sentence only comes out of the gate first once. So what I have to do is be prepared to receive that sentence, the beauty and the spunk of it, and hope that I can nurture its ambition and find an authorial context (story) for it to be received in and by. Not unlike a gift, which it all is. A gift, and for which I am always thankful to receive.
Houston: I know what you mean when you say gift. I got such a gift one time in my writing career, and it was the story “How To Talk To A Hunter,” which I wrote all in one sitting…maybe over a period of 36 hours, and one could make an argument (though I would not necessarily) that if there is one story that gave me my whole career it is that one. I had not been thinking about the central issue for a year as much as I had been living it….I had been up there in Alaska, three summers at that point, leading (dragging) Texan oil executives up one side of a mountain and down the other, so that they might shoot a Dall sheep at close range. I had been trying to win the love of said hunter all that time too, and all the things I (at the time) considered to be my good points (that I was literary and smart and well traveled and athletic) gave me not so much as a leg up over a person who called herself Patty Coyote. These facts of my life were mysterious to me (as many facts of my life continue to be) but unsolvable. I see now that that story was an attempt to begin to ask the right questions, but writing it felt way more like puking than thinking, and I have never had a story feel so much that way since.
Alexie: I have written some great stuff in short periods of time. I wrote the first draft of my most highly regarded short stories, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” in two hours or so. And didn't revise it much. But I can't say that I've ever written anything good and quickly on demand. I'm a big fan of the AMC TV series, “Mad Men,” about a high-powered advertising firm. They have to be creative on demand. And for high stakes. This 72 hour thing feels a little like that.
