PEN Center USA

Great writers use the darkest parts of themselves to produce great work. Here's an excerpt from a Paris Review interview with Amy Hempel on how her darkest secret became her first short story. Below, watch Nora Ephron discuss how her biggest fear sparked the creation of When Harry Met Sally.

AMY HEMPEL: The assignment was to write our worst secret, the thing we would never live down, the thing that, as Gordon [Lish] put it, “dismantles your own sense of yourself.” And everybody knew instantly what that thing, for them, was. We found out immediately that the stakes were very high, that we were expected to say something no one else had said, and to divulge much harder truths than we had ever told or ever thought to tell. No half-measures. He thought any of us could do it if we wanted it badly enough. And that, when I was starting out, was a great thing to hear from someone who would know.

INTERVIEWER: What was, if you can say, your “worst secret”?

HEMPEL: I failed my best friend when she was dying. It became the subject of the first story I wrote, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried.”

The Paris Review. Summer 2003. "The Art of Fiction No. 176, Amy Hempel."

How has your biggest fear or deepest secret informed your writing? Share in the comments!

It has happened not one, not two, but four weekends in a row. It’s now fair to call it a pattern. What I’m referring to is writing in cafés. Even though there's a certain comfort in being at home with familiar things and people, sometimes I have to leave the house in order to write. At a café there isn’t laundry to fold or dishes to put away. No one is going to demand my attention and I won't get side-tracked. Okay, this demanding person is me. There’s so much to do I oftentimes rationalize little tasks (“it’s just a work email I’ll quickly respond to” or “after I tidy up the living room…”).

The café I’ve been escaping to is Charlie’s Coffee in South Pasadena. Over the past month I’ve developed a ritual of sorts and crafted rules to keep me focused:

Rule 1: Order the go-to drink; don’t waste time scanning the menu. At Charlie’s that would be a vanilla chai latte or a Café Ole (their take on it is my favorite). Order the beverage in a ceramic mug—this sends the brain the message that I’m not on the go. I’m going to stay there for a while.

Rule 2: Don’t stand around waiting for the drink to arrive. Sit down immediately. By the time the drink is ready I’m situated, if not already writing.

Rule 3: This may be the most important rule for me: Whatever I do, I leave the laptop at home. That’s right—the laptop stays at home. I slow down when I put pen to paper. Obviously, it is a bit of a pain to transcribe new writing onto the computer or enter hand-written edits, but in the long run it saves me time. I have to admit, I’ve gotten a couple of glances. Other than book readers, I haven’t seen many people writing anything by hand. It’s a sea of computers whenever I go in there.

Rule 4: No headphones. There’s something about the lull of background noise that relaxes my brain. I know most would disagree with me on this point. However, I just get too wrapped up in the headphones and the music selection and switching the tune, etc. The quiet din allows me to stay present.

Up until recently, I hadn't been consistently writing in a café for years. I realize that I’ve become a bit old school. Oh well. There’s too much other stuff to think or worry about. For example, our mid-project packet is due today. Better get back to it.

At age twelve, I wrote my first collection of stories. I typed it all on a Macintosh––first generation––printed out ten copies, stuffed them in a fancy translucent cover with plastic binding, and gave them to my family and friends. I even sold a few at a garage sale for a dollar, still the most I’ve made from any story.

I only recall two of the stories now. One was a post-apocalyptic Don Quixote adaptation. I hadn’t actually read Quixote, just seen a cartoon version, but that was enough to go on. The second was called "Bookworm," about a man obsessed with books. He meets the girl of his dreams, a fellow bookworm, but he’s so painfully shy that he can’t get anywhere with her. One night, he magically transforms into a library book. She picks him out among all of the others and reads him-- his dream come true.

Not bad, twelve-year-old me. I was clearly inspired by lots of late night Twilight Zone viewings (see the video above). The “Bookworm” story came to mind this week as I was thinking about the importance of having readers. The intensive writing, reading, and critiquing schedule of The Mark program has revealed to me the absolute importance of the outside eye.

This is especially true when it comes to the behemoth that is the full-length manuscript. The more my collection approaches some kind of hybrid novel territory, the more important readers become. It’s too easy to lose perspective on my own work when I’m assuming the dual role of judge (writer) and jury (reader). Or, to use a different metaphor, only those on the outside of the hole you’re stuck in can help pull you out.

In our first meeting, Antoine Wilson had us read an essay about writing workshops by Frank Conroy, longtime director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (which is the first of its kind, so he knows of which he speaks). He states, “…the reader is to some extent the co-creator of the narrative. The author, then, must write in such a way as to allow the reader’s energy into the work.”

He calls it the “dance of two minds” and says, rightly, “without the active participation of the reader’s mind and imagination, absolutely nothing will happen.” This says to me that not only is less more, but even in a story where a zillion things happen, the reader must be included in the process. If the reader can't engage with the work, it's just words on a page.

One way to address this issue is to assume the reader is as intelligent as I am, but not more so. Writers will often read books “over their heads,” as Conroy puts it, and tackle challenging books they may not fully comprehend, as anyone who’s tried to make it through Ulysses, or better yet, Finnegans Wake, can attest to. But writing over one’s head, that can be deadly. The foundation of good writing, he states, is “meaning, sense, and clarity.”

But how do we get there? I’m not always sure what my stories are about until I’ve workshopped them, sometimes several times over. But it’s not like everyone agrees on a meaning and that’s that. The process is more like osmosis. As the conversation in a workshop flows, my mind sifts through the dirt of the story, the characters, the plot, the structure, language, and details, and if I’m paying attention, underneath it all I can uncover that rare and precious jewel: the theme.

The irony? It can take years for a writer to finish a short story, whereas a reader can read and digest it in under an hour.

When I was twelve, most of my readers were just impressed I wrote anything at all. Unsatisfied with the story collection, I attempted to turn the Quixote story into a novel. About a hundred or so pages in, I abandoned it. Had I a reader who offered critical advice, helped me see what I was trying to say, and inspired me to continue, perhaps I would’ve started this writing career a helluva lot earlier.

Where was The Mark when I needed it?

This week, as I write about writing, it is important to me to write about Shannon. She was my seventh grade Core teacher, which means she taught English in addition to history and social studies. She taught me about the power of words. She also taught me to believe that I could be skilled at expressing myself through them. For the past three and a half years, Shannon, who is 43, has battled cancer, and I recently learned that she is now in hospice care.

Some of the lessons I’ve learned from Shannon are literal. She taught me the importance of using homonyms properly (there, their and they’re; to, two and too; your and you’re; who’s and whose). She taught me to always seek the most meaningful word. (Good, she said, is a bland adjective. Can you think of a word that’s actually more descriptive?) She challenged us, her students, to find our true voices. (If you use swear words, she’d say, it suggests to the world that you don’t have the vocabulary to be more articulate.)

Of course, through her encouragement and positive example, she also illuminated deeper messages, many of which I continue to reflect on and strive toward today. Shannon opened the world of writing for me, teaching me about clarity, lyricism, and the power of self-expression. She also taught me to believe in myself as a writer.

In seventh grade, under Shannon’s tutelage, I wrote an essay titled “The Best Time of Day is Night” for a city-wide standardized writing test. You can imagine the approach many teachers would take to instructing middle schoolers about “standardized” writing, but imagine the opposite and then you’ve got Shannon’s approach. She encouraged us to be creative and develop our own style, to cultivate atmosphere and write poetically while still conveying information clearly. Also, we’d better use grammar and punctuation correctly!

When my essay came back with a strong score, Shannon made me feel special. Other teachers had given me positive feedback about my work before, but this was a pivotal moment because of the way Shannon taught and the way she connected with students. She gave me the confidence to believe that writing was something I could do well and that I should continue to work diligently to cultivate this ability.

Last year, Shannon visited the undergraduate creative writing course I was teaching at UC Davis. Though I was the instructor and she the visitor, she illuminated the classroom, and the way she engaged with the students exemplified the kind of teacher I would want to be.

I’m certain there are thousands of students whose lives Shannon has influenced in immensely positive and powerful ways. They can identify with me, then, when I celebrate the graceful powerhouse of a teacher and a person Shannon is. They can relate when I say, with sadness and gratitude, thank you to the woman with the big heart and the huge vocabulary who has made the world a brighter and more articulate place.