seems downplayed. Is this something you grapple with while writing in the shorter form? SAUNDERS
Again, I think this paucity of landscape ultimately has to do with prose quality. Somehow, when I try to do traditional landscape, the energy drops. I think this might be because the kind of landscape description I naturally do has been done to death. "A long shadow fell over the mountains, then over the river, which glistened blue in the dropping sun," etc. etc. I sometimes just like to leave that stuff alone and let the reader assume there's a physical world out there. Or come up with some small shorthand detail that will, I hope, stand in for the larger world -give the reader something on which to build that larger picture. I usually have a physical world pictured, but just try to telegraph it with a few small details or place names. And actually - so much of what writers write about writing is crap. Much of this answer has been. I think-well, not to sound like a broken-record, but I think mostly what I'm doing is responding to the needs of the story, especially at the sentence level. If I can pull off a description that's a net plus, hooray. HElM
Having completed a collection of essays, The Braindead Megaphone, can you describe for us how your process for writing nonfiction differed from writing fiction? If there was any, where was there overlap? SAUNDERS
The big difference - and this will sound obvious - is that in nonfiction plot is supplied. You come home knowing what you've done. There are your notes. The only variable is how you choose to present it. In fiction I am always looking for the plot, which I only seem to be able to do by writing a bunch of drafts.
176 I STEVE HElM