"Writing is a horrible, soul-crushing profession, but we’re all in the same boat," says the writer Colson Whitehead, speaking by phone from his home in New York.
If only, the unknown writer might reply. After all, Whitehead, 46, is the celebrated author of five well-received literary novels, from "The Intuitionist," a gripping murder mystery whose appealing heroine is an African-American elevator inspector in New York, to "The Zone," a comic zombie thriller and New York Times best-seller. He has also received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowship, among other awards.
So what boat is that again, and how do you get on the passenger list?
In addition to buckling down and writing, aspiring authors could start by listening to professionals at gatherings such as the three-day Kauai Writers Conference, where Whitehead spoke about the craft of writing on Friday and Saturday. The event ends today.
"While I didn’t like school, I’ve come to enjoy teaching much more than I thought I would," said the author, who as an undergraduate at Harvard never got into a creative-writing class. "You had to audition, and I would write these stories about depressive guys stalking the Quad. … It’s good training for being a writer if you can internalize rejection early."
In other words, Whitehead can relate. And he wants to help other writers. Like most novelists, he said, he has an unpublished book or two in the drawer.
"We all have our failures, our missteps where we sort of lose our way. For new and established writers it’s the same: Am I getting the story down, am I getting the characters down? I put my characters through the wringer. You have to have an arc, defeats and successes, but I heap torments upon them," he said, adding that with age and two children, he is becoming more empathetic.
Born and raised in New York, Whitehead is a comic, acerbic, sometimes sarcastic and often brutally honest writer. Asked about a scene in his novel "Sag Harbor," in which the young hero is taunted in school with a racist slur and later repeatedly slapped by his father for having done nothing, he replied, "I think we’re always navigating the comic and the tragic in our daily lives from hour to hour."
He turns his comic gifts on himself in "The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death," out in paperback this month. As to why he accepted an assignment to play in the World Series of Poker, he wrote, "I’ve always wanted to wear sunglasses indoors."
Other speakers on Kauai included Laura Moriarty, author most recently of "The Chaperone," a fictional account of the actress Louise Brooks’ early adventures in New York in the 1920s.
She wanted to be a writer since childhood but "resisted as long as I could because I felt I couldn’t make a living at it" and so became a social worker, she said by phone from her home in Lawrence, Kan. After realizing she really didn’t want to do anything else but write, Moriarty enrolled in night classes for creative writing.
Her answer was surprising when asked if she recommends that aspiring writers read a lot. "I’m not as big a reader as many writers," she said. "I’m a big eavesdropper; I love what Eudora Welty said about listening for stories."
The mission of the nonprofit Kauai Writers Conference is to support literary aspirations and community building, according to its president, David Rosenberg. To that end the conference included sessions with agents, editors and publishers and sponsored a free program for high school and college student writers.
For more information, go to kauaiwritersconference.com.
