Facing the blank page

Jonathan Safran Foer published his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated. in 2002, winning several literary awards including the National Jewish Book Award and The Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, dealt with a 9-year-old coming to terms with his father's death in the World Trade Center during 9/11.

Here he describes his process for writing fiction.

I begin with nothing and I unfortunately usually end with nothing in terms of the day-to-day process, but you know, it’s just a blank page.  I’ve never had characters before I started writing.  I’ve never had a moral.  I’ve never had a story to tell.  I’ve never had some voice that I found and wanted to share.  Auden, the poet, said, “I look at what I write so I can see what I think.” 

And that’s been very true for me in my process.  I don’t have a thought that I then try to articulate.  It’s only through the act of writing that I try to find my own thoughts.  So, it can be quite scary because you know, it’s... there’s a kind of faith, I guess, that you have to have either in yourself or in the process that something good will come from filling blank pages. 

And it very, very often doesn’t feel that way, but every now and then you stumble upon something.  Some idea which you didn’t know you had, or a feeling that you didn’t know that you had.  And there’s nothing like that revelation and I don’t know of anywhere else in life to find it.