The Rumpus interviews author Vendela Vida (think Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, think the screenplay for Away We Go, think Mrs. Dave Eggers).
From the piece...
Rumpus: Who sees your work while it’s in progress?
Vida: I’m in a writing group with about seven other writers in the Bay Area. I also show my work to my coeditors at The Believer, to the managing editor, to some McSweeney’s editors, and to my husband.
I joined the writing group after having a terrible experience writing my first novel. I spent years writing this 400-page book and didn’t show anybody it in the process. In the end, I was only interested in about eight pages of it, which I salvaged. I threw the rest away and started another novel, which became And Now You Can Go, based on those eight pages. After that experience I decided to never go for so long and write so much without showing my work to at least a few trusted readers.
Rumpus: Really? That’s amazing because your books are very spare, especially this one, and that’s something that I really admire about your work. It’s a very precise way of writing.
Vida: I overwrite at first. Whenever I start a book, I think, This is going to be my long book, and by the time I take out all the extra words, I think, Well, the next one is definitely going to be my big book. But I think I’m finally at peace with the fact that I like writing shorter novels. Those are the kind of novels that I love reading.
Rumpus: So that sense of sparseness is a process of peeling things away?
Vida: I definitely sculpt all the extra words out of a sentence. I think every sentence I write starts with about 4 or 5 more words than end up in it.
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