"Writing fiction is a great joy after working for so long in creative nonfiction," says  Lawrence Sutin, author of When To Go Into The Water (Sarabande Books, 2009), "In fiction, you are free to imagine as you will, create whatever characters and situations you wish. In creative nonfiction, be it memoir or biography, there is a tether to an experiential truth that I am happy to honor.  But I can appreciate the fun of writing without restraint, and for me at least, fiction is that."
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Sutin has written two memoirs, (Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance and A Postcard Memoir), two biographies, (Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick and Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley), and a historical work (All Is Change: The Two Thousand Year Journey of Buddhism to the West), but When To Go Into The Water, the tale of ficitional author Hector de Saint-Aureole by way of alternating sketches from his life and the lives of future readers of his epic of philosophy, is his first published novel.
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"In my two biographies of Philip K. Dick and Aleister Crowley I found emerging, in the writing, two very different voices,"Â he says. "In the case of Dick, it was personal, engaged, an impassioned argument for Dick's greatness as a writer at a time (the biography was published in 1989) when Dick's reputation was not as well established as it is now. Â In the case of Crowley (the biography was published in 2000), I was dispassionate, focused on the facts as opposed to the "Great Beast" mythos that had dominated prior biographies of Crowley. Â In the case of When to Go Into the Water, in telling of the fictional life of Hector de Saint-Aureole, I used a relatively subdued voice for Hector's episodes, hoping they would speak for themselves as it were, and then a broad range of voices to convey the different fictional readers of Hector's imagined book."
I was grateful for his loyalty to creativity in fiction and felt experience in memoir, which helped me sort one from the other, the semester in grad school when Sutin was my advisor and helped me revise a novel assembled from a muddle of fictionalized parts of my own life, undeniably a daunting prospect, to which his commitment was impressive. Â "Teaching and advising other writers is a great way to make a living." he says. "There are two primary reasons why: First, many of the writers I work with are good people and committed artists, which makes spending time with them and their work quite satisfying. Second, teaching writing is a job in which you can be honest and helpful, which I much appreciate. Those points being made, I would not say that teaching writing helps or hinders my own writing more or less than any other job would. Â You have to find time to write whatever work you are doing, and finding the time and using it well is a challenge for anyone who does not make their living from their writing."
He's right about that. Time management is crucial to artists of any kind. Financially speaking, freelance writing is a rocky road, feast or famine, an uphill climb, all those chestnuts apply. And so far I'm uncomfortable leading groups or handing down rules or instructions of any kind, which, to me, seems inherently contrary to my opinion that writing should be all about discovery (so I don't think I'd make a good teacher). I'd rather be a kind of host, as Larry was. For now, I'm a freelance writer and part-time bookkeeper. At the end of that semester, I asked him what was the next step, where did he think I should send my novel? He told me he thought I needed to rewrite it.
"Oh, I did, I mean, every month I changed it according to your suggestions, accepting some, rejecting others, you know."
"What's your hurry?" he asked me, and I realized I was in a hurry
You have to be a little hardnosed; finding work and making sure you get paid becomes part of your job-but the native autonomy guaranteed by freelancing, as opposed to other forms of employment, is priceless to me. Call me crazy, but I remain committed to the gamble of making my living this way. Slow but steady, eyes always on the next article. That's where my hurry has led me so far, and I feel like I'm on the right track. I self-published the novel in question a few days ago. At first I couldn't figure out how to purchase a copy, now I can't make it pop up when I do a search on it or I'd provide a link (and the whole thing's automated, so I can't really lodge a complaint). But this is only my first published book we're talking about, I'm just beginning. When to Go into the Water is Lawrence Sutin's sixth or seventh. I'm grateful for his example.
"What's next for me as a writer, as far as I can see now, involves two different projects," he says. "One is an in-depth book-length exploration of the wide ranging implications of a joke (or was it?) told by Stalin to Churchill and FDR in Tehran in November 1943, during the Second World War.  The second is a novel set in the world of show business as it has evolved over the last several decades.  We'll see how things progress.  Wish me luck."
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You got it, Larry.
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