Orhan Pamuk

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.

The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind. In the old stories, I love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too. In my novel, My Name is Red, when I wrote about the old Persian miniaturists who had drawn the same horse with the same passion for so many years, memorising each stroke, that they could recreate that beautiful horse even with their eyes closed, I knew I was talking about the writing profession, and my own life. If a writer is to tell his own story – tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people – if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art – this craft – he must first have been given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favours the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing – when he thinks his story is only his story – it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him stories, images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build. If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination – that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.

~ Orhan Pamuk

For a deeper understand of Pamuk click here. He was the first Turkish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. A novelist is someone who wants to be alone, and that time is isolation is key to the creative process. Writers can define the human condition better than anyone and with that responsibility comes the necessity to get it right.


Here is an interview Pamuk did with Charlie Rose. The interview starts at 9:20.





Pamuk's official site

Finished ?!?!

I just finished a manuscript for a novel I've been working on since I was in school.

Seven years (at least) in the making.

It has been written, reworked, forgotten, torn to shreds, reworked, and poured over.


It is the depth of my passion, my pain, my tears and my need to escape.

It is simple and lovely.

and it is finished.

so what do I do with it now?

Once...

Once, in the middle of Colorado, some 70 miles from Denver, and 45 from The Springs, there lived a small girl on a ranch. The ranch was very expansive indeed, and had many staff. There were chefs, and a baker. There were cooks for the staff, and cooks for the guests. There were cooks only for breakfast, and others just for dinner. There were girls to serve the food, and girls to clean up. There were girls to feed the children, and girls to serve the adults. There were men to care for the horses, men to round them up, men to saddle them, men to clean up after them. There were girls to clean the rooms, girls to clean the house, girls to wash the laundry, girls to fold the laundry. There were specialists to cut the grass, and mechanics to tend to the cars, there were men to cut the wood, and men to deliver the wood. And there was a man, of no particular title, who took care of the ranch dog: Honey. In charge of the staff was a kind man named Bill, who had been integrated to bring order to the chaos. This kind man had three daughters. The most precocious and curious, the third, lived in an isolated world the forest that surround the ranch created. Beyond Bill and his family, two other families made their home among the pine trees and cabins. The first was the owner of the ranch, a man in his sixties, and his wife. The owner started the ranch with his wife as a place for those in the city to escape the fast-paced life. The other was the man’s oldest son, Bill’s brother-in-law, who had come into the position of convenience as his birthright, and had found ways to make himself indispensable while doing absolutely nothing. The son was married with two children. Together the extended family found a way to co-exist on the acres. The children ran unchecked during the day and were able to create all kinds of worry and trouble and nonsense. But it was during this time the youngest daughter would shake the other kids and go and work with the people who tended the gardens and made the food and cleaned the rooms. Life was pleasant on the ranch, as close to heaven as one could get in Colorado.

In DC the chance to have a car is one that must be relished. With the opportunity to have one for close to two weeks my friends and I decided all the wonderful places we would go, and the amazing things we would see.

First off: shopping day. Now it is hard for those of you with cars to image the joy of going to Ikea and Target and Costco with no agenda or time crunch. It was great to just go and take our time and look at the wonderful possibilities these stores offered, things we had missed before because our previous trips had been under the stress of our zipcar reservation counting down before we could even get orientated.

I love when friends offer to take me to Target normally. But I feel like a kid in a candy store when my comrade has already tasted everything there. There is a silent pressure not to loiter too long in the kitchen section, thinking how wonderful it would be to have a blender. No! Get your markers and your books and your other misc. items and let’s go. Same thing with the grocery store, it was unbelievably freeing to be able to wander the isles and contemplate diet coke vs. diet dr. skipper, skippy creamy peanut butter vs. the generic store brand. Are the bags of peppers really a better value then three individually chosen ones? Hmmmmm. Again, you don’t have time to ponder these questions when you’ve reserved the zipcar for exactly three hours and you have four stores to hit in that time. It’s a very strategic outing when you have a zipcar – know where things are, get in, get out, avoid traffic and never be late!

Alas, not use to the freedom of having a set of wheels, I have to admit we wore ourselves out. I should have known better than to run a marathon when I was use to the 100-yard dash.

Though, the possibility of a car did open up social events. We were no longer metro bound and therefore less inclined go to far when it’s off peak hours or the reality of a bus ride at 1am sinks in. We carted everyone we knew around, and drove to everything! Walks that were once doable, and expected, were too far and an annoyance not to be tolerated.

Having a car did reveal some things to me, it made me wonder what kind of a car person would I be? Would I be open and receptive to my friends who are car-less? Would it change where I chose to hang out? Would I be more in the ‘burbs and loose what makes DC great?

Who knows. But I must admit, parking was annoying, gas was WAY overpriced and being stuck in traffic I envied those people on the bus able to read a book and push all responsibility away.

Dinner parties in DC are interesting events.

I’m sure in New York the conversation revolves around the latest Broadway show, or how expensive things are getting, or the newest “it” designer. In L.A. it’s a combination of the arts, plastic surgery and the latest boutique one has to shop at.

You never quite know what the conversation in DC will be, but it probably won’t be what’s listed above. Yet, eventually in any conversation politics come up, mostly likely the election, but sometimes it’s a bill on the Hill or a press conference that was given the day before. More often then not, the conversation turns into one about issues.

Case in point, a friend and I went to a book-signing last week made up of a close-knit group of people to which we were outsiders. We found the row house on the Hill and went in. Over expensive bottles of wine we mingled, discussing the current state of China, the pro-life stance and the slew of recent movies which give adoption as an option, the persecuted church and the abuses they suffer in different countries. The audience was mostly in their 30’s. Scanning the host’s bookshelf I discovered rows of C.S. Lewis, Bonhoffer, Tozer, praised novels on Burma, China, Nixon, WWII, autobiographies by Hillary, Obama, Albright, fiction “classics”, and a modge podge of Christian apologetics. It was a fascinating mix of people from all different aspects of the city.

Contrast that to the other get-together I attended. Enter another close-knit group of friends ten years younger. It’s 10pm on a Saturday, there are stacks of cards and plenty of beer. The conversation falls on the election, immigration, reforms in the government, and who in the group can lie the best. Then the brilliant idea – a drinking game! Laughter ensued, the conversation turned to literature and movies, relationships and dating… This host’s bookshelf is a collection of treasured fiction, key books on development and poverty, bios on Albright, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Shackleton, history of the Middle East, Africa, along with a smattering of classic kids novels and Christian apologetics.

Two parties, two tones, two groups, both in different stages of life. One in the present, a time I would not change. A time of friendship, laughter, figuring out life, and getting by pay check to pay check. We don’t have the opportunity to vacation in Venice for a month, or buy the greatest collection of wine, none of us own where we live. But in a city that is cold and impersonal, where everyone is a networking opportunity and time for real relationships does not exist – it’s refreshing to have a group of friends you can just be with.

New Years

Maybe staying home alone on New Years wasn’t the best idea…

But I wasn’t in the mood to be social, and besides, I don’t really get what the big deal with New Years is anyway. So I choose to be reclusive, enjoying a night to be in my apt. and chill, opting instead to watch a movie and ring in the new year with good dreams.

Things don’t always happen as they should.

The movie I watched made me cry, setting me into a bad mood as I have no energy these days and don’t enjoy crying at sappy movies anyway. But I should have known it was a bad idea to watch a movie I knew someone died in, given I had nearly cried at a MTV show the day before.

No joke.

So I did what any logical person would do, I called my parents, I regretted the decision immediately but since the phone was already ringing I knew my father would just call me back and then I’d have to explain why I hung up. So I waited. My dad picked up and we chatted for a moments. He was generally concerned with my decision to be alone on New Years, but I tried to subdue his worries as best I could. Chalking it all up to the fact that I am an independent woman and didn’t want to travel home alone at 2am. This seemed to pacify him, though I could still see him with visions of me sitting alone with empty ice cream cartons strewn about. I decided to move on. I asked for my mother and began an annoyed conversation with her telling me I need to make friends, and my crying I don’t know how, all the while wondering why I called in the first place.

I hung up and called my friend. She was driving to a New Years party at the house of the boy she’s gone on dates with. We got disconnected several times before she admitted she was stuck in a snow bank outside the boy’s home and had been spinning her tires for the last ten minutes. I told her to stop, listing off the disadvantages of spinning her tires and we worked to try conjure up a way for her to become unstuck that did not include going inside and asking for help. Unfortunately her car did not have any spare cardboard to speak of, or a shovel to help her dig. The conversation of my telling her to go inside and her finding any other way out lasted for about a half hour, then Rachel relented and walked to the door.

Realizing I was only moments away from 2008 I scratched my original idea of slumber at midnight and called my best friend. She answered on the second ring, her voice hoarse, her nose running.

“Are you feeling any better?” I asked. My best friend, no one for giving short answers, launched into a story about how, yes, she was feeling better, but she had mysteriously developed a rash on the left side her body. She had noticed it the day before, while playing with her two children. Well she had discovered it by ramming her hip into the corner of her desk and when she went to check for purple skin discovered pink bumps instead. By bedtime she realized the rash had spread to her hand. She studied her right hand wondering if it really was the size of a football as she imagined. Then she paused, should she call someone to call her in the morning? After all, she had no idea what the rash was, and for all she knew it could poisoniness and as soon as she slept she’d slip into a comma, and her three year old would come in and attempt to wake her to no avail. The kids would spend the day forging for themselves while she was knocked out on the bed, no one the wiser. Finally she decided that was silly and went to bed, grateful when she awoke early the next morning.

But it did not stop there. While attempting to get her son clean with a shower she found a black widow on one of his toys. Unsure of her discovery she trapped the spider in a glass bottle, carefully cutting out air holes, and put it on her husband’s workbench. Concerned her rash could actually be the consequence of being bitten the day before she called her brother-in-law who rushed over and confirmed that yes, the spider was a black widow, but he did not believe she had been bit. Just to be sure my best friend got a sitter and trekked off to the doctor, spider in hand. The nurse confirmed her ailment was not spider induced and sent her home, recommending cough syrup.

So my friend had survived the day, the swell from the rash subsided, her spider safely on her husband’s workbench for further examination when he returned from his trip out of town.

Hanging up from our conversation I began to realize that maybe a quiet night alone could be seen as a blessing and slowly made my bed.

So I don't know if anyone actually reads this, but I enjoy having some place to put my work.

The writing process is hard. I don't think that I ever appreciated the amount of work that went into creating a truly great book. I say that because there is plenty of tripe out there - and believe me is that's all I wanted then I could have written 10 novels by now.

But I want something timeless. I want a story you get to the end of and feel sad because you have been forced to leave that world. I want a story that you become part of, that you wished the people were your friends, that when someone asks you who you want to have coffee with it takes you a moment to answer because you feel silly naming a fictional character.

I want a story with heart and soul, that displays a life.

I remember being in a writing group in high school and someone brought in submission material from smaller publishing firms and writing magazines. I read with horror the list of what these people want, or did not want, in their stories...

- There will be no sex, alcohol, drugs, bad language, lust, inappropriate behavior, judgment, prejudice, gossip, theft, etc. etc. etc. (you get the picture)
- Our readers expect a good story that is easy to read, please keep the content to a light feeling.

And what is life? I ask. Life is a series of experiences faced over time. I love those stories that are the one daring thing someone did in their life, the one trial they overcame. Good for them, but life is a series of daring things, of trials. People succeed or fail, they stumble and they struggle, they face challenges and decisions and then deal with the outcome of their choices. So how can you adequately write a story that is true or honest or meaningful or good if you cannot encompass any of the parts of life?

My characters are far from perfect, and that is wonderful. My characters are real, they are not cookie cutter, but figures facing the true daily grind of life.

Who knows. I've spent the last five years (off and on) toiling over stories I feel so far from finishing. Maybe it will be another year before they're done - maybe they will never get published, but when I hand a copy to someone I can do it with pride because I didn't settle as a writer and chose instead to produce something of substance, instead of something easy...