Ask the Author: Sarah McCraw Crow
Answered Questions (3)
Sarah McCraw Crow
Give yourself permission to write, and to write badly! You might have heard Ann Lamott talk about shitty first drafts, which is what we all write. Try not to worry about what others might think, or what the outcome will be. Just get some words on the page. For me, writing by hand in a notebook often yields more interesting results than writing on a Word document on the laptop.
And read a lot. Go back to the books you love and reread them, thinking about what it is that made you love them the first time. Read whatever is calling to you.
If you can, find a writing buddy, a writing group, or a class. Sharing your work and getting feedback really helps writers learn to write better. The key is finding the right person, group, or class. Grub Street in Boston offers a range of short- and long-term classes in all genres. Stanford University's continuing education division also offers some great online classes, but they're expensive.
And read a lot. Go back to the books you love and reread them, thinking about what it is that made you love them the first time. Read whatever is calling to you.
If you can, find a writing buddy, a writing group, or a class. Sharing your work and getting feedback really helps writers learn to write better. The key is finding the right person, group, or class. Grub Street in Boston offers a range of short- and long-term classes in all genres. Stanford University's continuing education division also offers some great online classes, but they're expensive.
Sarah McCraw Crow
My novel The Wrong Kind of Woman grew out a couple of my longstanding obsessions. One is my interest in the women of my mom's age and a little older (women who are in their 80s and 90s today)--what did they think about the 1960s, all the protests and unrests, and the second wave of the women's movement in the early 1970s? The other is my interest in all-male colleges before they became coed, what their cultures were like, and how they managed change. Those two obsessions don't seem to go together, but they did in my novel, which is partly set at/near a small college that's grappling with whether to admit women.
Sarah McCraw Crow
I have a mix of old and new on my summer-reading list this year.
For new books, these are at the top of my list:
--Brit Bennett's novel The Vanishing Half
--Christina Clancy's debut novel The Second Home
--Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Book of Longing
--Sarah Sligar's debut novel Take Me Apart
--Anne Tyler's Redhead By the Side of the Road
--Elizabeth Wetmore's debut novel Valentine
Among (slightly) older books, I'm about halfway through Toni Morrison's essay collection The Source of Self-Regard, a big essay collection that came out in 2019, before she died. My VCFA advisor at the time recommended it, and I was struck anew by how prescient she was, writing about gender and race issues in the 80s, essays that could have been written today. Looking forward to getting back to it after I finish my grad program.
Other older books I want to get to:
--more Kate Atkinson! I want to fill in the gaps and read some of the books she wrote before Life After Life.
--Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women
For new books, these are at the top of my list:
--Brit Bennett's novel The Vanishing Half
--Christina Clancy's debut novel The Second Home
--Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Book of Longing
--Sarah Sligar's debut novel Take Me Apart
--Anne Tyler's Redhead By the Side of the Road
--Elizabeth Wetmore's debut novel Valentine
Among (slightly) older books, I'm about halfway through Toni Morrison's essay collection The Source of Self-Regard, a big essay collection that came out in 2019, before she died. My VCFA advisor at the time recommended it, and I was struck anew by how prescient she was, writing about gender and race issues in the 80s, essays that could have been written today. Looking forward to getting back to it after I finish my grad program.
Other older books I want to get to:
--more Kate Atkinson! I want to fill in the gaps and read some of the books she wrote before Life After Life.
--Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women
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