Writing is hard work, with the goal of making it look easy

Ever promise yourself to read a certain author’s work, but never got around to it?

I haven’t yet kept my promise to read the work of Paul Auster, among America’s most prolific writers.

Auster died on April 30; his obituary led me to an online trove of interviews he did on the craft of writing.

Auster wrote novels and memoirs, poetry and translations.

In a 2017 interview, he offered these observations:

“Writing a passage 10 or 15 times, going over and over and over, fixing the sentences, trying to hear the rhythm, until it looks like a piece of music — effortless, smooth — with the energy that I want: That’s the work. The hard work is in trying to make it look easy.”

Keeping what you write “swift and lean,” he said, “propelling yourself. Every word counts; every comma is important.”

Including writers who like to write.

How about those who don’t?

Gloria Steinem, the noted journalist who co-founded Ms. Magazine, said, “I do not like to write. I love having written.”

When I coach writers, I tell them that the key to good writing is rewriting. We can’t just toss off a draft and consider the job done.

Read aloud what you have written.

Writers work in different ways.

Auster wrote in longhand, hoping to produce a single page a day.

Then, when satisfied, he’d type it out.

Auster never planned to become a writer.

But when he was a kid, he ran into the great baseball player Willie Mays and asked for his autograph.

From that moment on, young Paul never went anywhere without a pencil; for the rest of his life, he noted everything interesting that he saw or heard.

Plenty wound up being published.