Some brief notes (what I note below is as much the wisdom of Rafael Alvarez and Chaim Potok):
Potok taught writing at JHU in 1996 and allowed Rafael Alvarez, a Baltimore Sun reporter who had not yet published his first book, to sit in. Knowing Potok commuted in my train from Philadelphia, Rafael volunteered to pick him up at the station and drive him to JHU. In this way, he collected the wisdom of Chaim Potok on writing, with the intention of writing an essay on Potok for the Sun. While the essay was never written, this talk is the essay he would have written.
Potok wrote The Chosen, which is a work of literary fiction that sold 3.5 million copies. It was also made into a movie starring Rod Steiger. He wrote about a dozen other books, both fiction and non-fiction, and is highly regarded as a writer of Jewish culture, history and philosophy.
As a teacher at JHU, Potok looks for a students "voice". He also stressed the carpentry, the hard work and the the craft, of writing. Writing is not "won" by the smartest, the most talented, the swiftest. It requires courage and hard work and diligence. Voice can be learned. Keep having new experiences. Don't repeat yourself. Always strive to improve and do better. For a short story, say 10 pages, Potok would write at least a dozen drafts of the overall content and 20 drafts of individual portions. For Potok, the writer is not that different from the sculptor. Both create their works from their imagination - the writer is using the English language and the sculptor a block of marble. However, the writer, Potok says, must first create his marble before he or she can start on crafting the story. It is through the heart and human imagination that we document our stories. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
For more details of this great lecture, see the video above.
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