Tag Archive for SUNY Albany

The Writing Process: Think Harder, and Allow Time to Do Its Work

At a winter reading by the great George Saunders at SUNY Albany, he quoted Albert Einstein, who said:

“No problem is ever solved within the plane of its original conception.”

Which means, to me:

You cannot figure out the entirety of a story on the day you first conceive it. Layers must accumulate. Questions raised, pathways explored, dead-ends endured.

The writing of a story takes time, pure and simple. But more importantly, as Einstein said, it takes MOVEMENT from the original place of conception. Where you begin, the place you thought you were at, cannot be where the answers are found.

Keep writing. Keep moving.