Question Everything Advises Danielle Lazarin
In her craft essay in the February 2018 #133 issue of Glimmer Train’s Bulletin, Danielle Lazarin tells readers to “Question Everything” as she does in her own drafting process. Her essay opens:
“On some days, my writing notebooks look like an inquisition, my pages topped and ended with questions: in all-caps, underlined, circled. Many are small: What do the kids want to be called? What is her work? Handwriting=obsessive or careless? Maybe she cries on the subway home, after dinner? But they’re big, too: What is true, the memory of it, or the moment? Is she lacking? DO WE REQUIRE HOPE? Though they may appear frantic, a series of scribbled questions aren’t signs of confusion or desperation but of sufficient curiosity on my part to propel a story forward. At every stage of my work, questions are my most essential writing tools. I use them to move through to the other side of murky. It’s only by stepping into that unknown and uncomfortable space repeatedly during my process that I can become more deliberate in the story I’m telling.”
Also included in this month’s GT Bulletin are Thomas Fox Averill’s “Writing Archival Fiction” and Aline Ohanesian “On Rejection.” The Bulletin is free to read online and have delivered monthly to your e-mail.
