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George Saunders: On Story

Storytelling, at least from my experience of it… I think it’s a stand-in for day to day life. So, when you come to a story with this attitude we’ve been talking about, which is kind of hopeful, generous, not to pushy. It’s like ‘well, what are you? I don’t know.’ You know, when you try to leave your ideas about the story at the door… those things are so much like what you do with the person in your life that you love. You come back to them again and again and try to intuit their real expansiveness, and you try to keep them close to you, you try to give them the benefit of the doubt. So in that sense you could see revision as a form of active love. It’s actually love in progress, I guess.

Author George Saunders on story:

These unadorned outtakes of Saunders just talking direct to camera about his writing process are even better: