Amy Tan

We reached Amy Tan, who along with Scott Turow is in the all author rock band, The Rock Bottom Remainders, and asked her for a couple questions for Scott Turow.

Tan: Apart from legal and procedural kind of research,  what kind of preparatory work or thinking do you do, .e.g, writing ideas in a journal, googling facts and figures, noting everyday details of life?  Do you fall into the common writer trap these days of Googling every little thing and over-researching as you write?

Turow: I don’t over-Google. I always bear in mind Robert Parker’s statement when we did a panel together years ago and someone asked Parker about the research behind the verisimilitude of his work.  “I’m just a good typist,” Parker said, meaning, I think, it is, after all, fiction. The most peculiar thing I do in terms of preparation is that I sort of think at the keyboard.  For about a year, I get up and just write, discovering characters, settings, histories, dialogue without a particular agenda.  Anything that moves me that morning.  Eventually something seems to be coming to form.

Tan: What is the question people never ask that you wish they would ask?

Turow: Mr. Turow, what do you have to say about the Swedish Academy’s shocking announcement this morning that you have won the Nobel Prize in Literature.