“Writing is a combination of sculpting and songwriting for me. The first challenge is to vomit out the raw hunk of material—gather the thoughts that will anchor
the storyline, in their rawest form—and then carve them into something beautiful and cohesive from there. Once the base has formed, I can listen to the flow of the words and see if it sounds like my own music. Okay, all pretentiousness aside, I’ve got synesthesia, (I see things in shapes, rather than as abstractions), so visual references are key for me in trying to explain how my brain works. In trying to wrangle my thoughts, I keep very specific tools handy—my notebook, a printed version of the text I’m working on, a printout of the transcript I’m incorporating, a highlighter, and a set of Pilot V7 pens in blue, black, and red. That sounds insane, but each color means a different thing, and allows me to organize a wealth of raw material that needs to be carved out into a delicate, flowing object. Red is corrections, blue is new ideas, and black is raw writing. I also keep all my printed drafts so I can remember that a text has come a long way.”
—iO Tillett Wright, author of Darling Days (Ecco, 2016)
Photo credit: Ryan Pfluger