"Is Allegra Goodman your pen name?" I get that question a lot. No, Allegra Goodman is not a pen name, but my given name. My parents were young and happy when I was born. My name is a cameo of my father and mother as newlyweds with their whole lives before them.]]> Allegra Goodman: Jewish writer, an American writer, and a woman writer. I'm proud to belong to each of those categories. I'm also a writer in English. I love my language, and its storied tradition. What a magnificent hodge-podge, a treasure house filled with ancient jewels and foreign coins and chains of gold.]]> Writers need both. All the talent in the world won't help if you can't sit down and develop your ideas. At the same time, if you aren't inspired, then all your discipline will be for naught. It's so tricky to know how hard to press yourself when you're struggling. Should you keep churning out pages and hope new ideas will come? Or should you back off and wait for inspiration? My own solution is to wait when I get stuck, but to read and think and take notes while I'm waiting.]]> From "The Wedding of Henry Markowitz"—first published in The New Yorker.
". . . Who is going to remember this wedding?"
"Well, he invited two hundred-fifty people," Sarah says.
. . . "Tell me her name again."
"Susan McPhearson."
"I know that. I mean the spelling."
Sarah spells it for her.
"That's not a Jewish name."
"It's not a Jewish person, Ma," Ed calls out.]]> Teaching is a kind of performance. Articulating ideas to a class, and brainstorming with student writers, I finish my two hour seminar with a kind of runner's high. I laugh at myself because after ten minutes of euphoria I just want to lie down.]]> Here's what I took to Hawaii: my guitar, and my backpack with my name on it in black laundry marker. In the backpack: six panties, and a bra, Five T-shirts of different colors, a pair of shorts (I wore my jeans), two Indian gauze skirts wadded up in little balls, and a macramé bikini . . .]]> All this happened many years ago, before the streets were air-conditioned. Children played outside then, and in many places the sky was naturally blue. A girl moved to a town house in the Colonies on Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea.]]> If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's the value of revision. I write draft after draft, rereading, rethinking, rephrasing every step of the way. I know it sounds tedious, but if you love your material, it's a wonderful process. Imagine refinishing a wood table. You know the wood is solid cherry. You just have to strip it down and rub and smooth it to reveal the natural grain. If you're patient the results are so satisfying. Your work just glows.]]> Here are my favorite lines about publishing books. The wise and witty Anne Lamott said this in a speech for Rochester Arts and Lectures: "Publication is something you work your way back from with a lot of therapy. After you have been out there trying to get people to buy your book, the level of madness and mental illness that you're at currently will seem like the good old days." Reading this always makes me laugh.]]> Piles and piles of yellow leaves pillowing the trail. Elizabeth slipped in them hiking once with Isaac and the children, and she fell right on her face, deep, deeper, falling gradually, losing her balance by degrees. She kept waiting to hit hard ground, expecting something sharp. But she never did hit. The leaves were so deep that she felt as though she were falling in a dream; falling farther and farther until she landed in her own bed. She just laughed; she couldn't get her feet under her; she couldn't stop laughing.]]> When I began writing, dialog was easiest for me. My early stories, in Total Immersion and The Family Markowitz read like little plays. Even now, when I develop characters, voice comes first.]]> While I believe in revision, I think that once a book is published, it's done. I don't return to my old work. I'd never embark on a revision project like Henry James in his New York Edition. I don't mind that the twenty year old Allegra Goodman reads differently from the forty year old Allegra Goodman. I like the difference. Each of my books has its own voice, and each is me.]]> There's nothing better than disappearing into a book. That's the way we read as children—with such passion and such joy. When I was a child, reading felt like falling down a rabbit hole. I find it harder now to fall into books, but when I do find myself falling, I love the sensation. I can fall into the work of Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan and Marilynne Robinson, to name a few. Austen does it for me as well.]]> "Ever since I met you I've tried to be your friend . . ." Cliff began.
"That's one way of putting it."
"And you've always doubted me, and you've always resisted, and you've always competed against me, and I don't understand why."
She was close to tears. "You don't understand because you don't know me. You don't have any idea who I am."
He stared at her, and she was so worked up and her words were so wild that she was indeed a stranger to him. "Who are you, then?" he challenged her.
"Your equal," she said; but fiercely she thought, better.]]> These lines come from "Variant Text"—my first published short story: Attalia glares at her father through the strands of her slippery brown hair. She screams rather loudly for her size. Fine pair of lungs. Pity she doesn't have an ear for music. Cecil had tested both of his children early on for any signs of musical aptitude. When Attalia was two, he set her on the piano bench. She struck out at the Steinway with her fists, banging the ivory keys. Cecil had waited a few minutes and then given up. ]]> If you want to gage your progress, read your work aloud to a friend. You'll hear mistakes that you'd never see on the page.]]>