I’ve been reading some Amy Hempel lately on Chuck Palahniuk’s strong recommendation. Like just about all writers I respect, she has an utter lack of pretense and a way with packing as much meaning into as few words as possible. Traits that translate well into music, and that I hope for my own work to have. This interview at powells.com sums up her approach in about fifty words that sum up three-quarters of everything you need to know to make good art in whatever field.
Interviewer: When you teach creative writing, is there one piece of advice that seems to resonate more than others, seems to work, with students?
Hempel: Not so much a piece of advice as a question to keep in mind, which is the most basic of questions: Why are you telling me this? Someone out there will be asking, and you better have a very compelling answer, or reason.
There are people who have been raised by loving parents to believe that the world awaits their every thought and sentence, and I’m not one of them. So I respond to that. Is this essential? The question might be, Is this something only you can say—or, only you can say it this way? Is this going to make anyone’s life better, or make anyone’s day better? And I don’t mean the writer’s day.