Advice from the Masters: Susan Sontag

Jan 11, 2017 | Better Writing

Susan Sontag has already appeared in our Advice from the Masters posts, but I just read her 1995 Paris Review interview and I found this gem. The interviewer asked “How do you actually write?”

“I write with a felt-tip pen, or sometimes a pencil, on yellow or white legal pads, that fetish of American writers. I like the slowness of writing by hand. Then I type it up and scrawl all over that. And keep on retyping it, each time making corrections both by hand and directly on the typewriter, until I don’t see how to make it any better. Up to five years ago, that was it. Since then there is a computer in my life. After the second or third draft it goes into the computer, so I don’t retype the whole manuscript anymore, but continue to revise by hand on a succession of hard-copy drafts from the computer.”

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If you want even more writing advice from writers, check out Jon Winokur’s blog, “AdvicetoWriters.”