For
Novelist Ursula Hegi, Creating Characters Is A Bit Like Method
Acting
Novelist
Ursula Hegi creates her characters much like an actor takes
on a role and these characters become so much a part of her
life that she feels saddened by their loss when she finishes
writing a book.
Hegi, author of acclaimed novels like Stones from the River
(1994), described the creative process of writing in response
to a question from the audience at the final author’s
reading in Barnard’s fall Books
Etc. series on Tuesday evening, Nov. 18. Hegi’s
reading, discussion and book signing drew about 100 people
to Barnard Hall.
A visiting instructor in Barnard’s English Department
this fall, Hegi read selections from her newly published novel,
Sacred Time, as well as the first page of a new novel
she has just started to write.
Hegi explained that her characters are, at once, parts of
herself and also distinct "people" that she comes
to know more intimately than anyone else in her life.
‘For
me to write about [the character’s] feelings, I need
to become that character," she said. "So, in a sense,
it all happens to me," she said, likening the process
to method acting. At a point, though, the characters start
to take on lives of their own. "I find that when the
characters start to chase me instead of me chasing them, that’s
when they are really alive… You know them in a way you
never know anyone else. You inhabit their soul, their heart."
Hegi added that, when she drove to the post office to mail
the manuscript of Stones from the River to her editor,
she was actually weeping. It was part catharsis from having
finished the book, and part the sense that she would greatly
miss the characters, she said.
Hegi’s care with characters and their emotions came through
clearly in the passages she read from Sacred Time,
which follows an Italian-American family over 50 years in
the Bronx and in Italy. Her inspiration for the Bronx sections
of the book, she explained, came from the desire "to
create a time period when, from all I had heard, was a magical
place." Her husband, she later noted, grew up in the
Bronx.
Her readings, from the first and second chapters, were indeed
magical, depicting with feeling and humor a seven-year-old
boy’s thoughts watching his mother dance with his aunt,
and then later the mother’s thoughts during a troubled
part of her marriage as she sought to literally expunge her
husband’s image from family pictures.
"I try to write on the edge, where sorrow and humor meet.
I try to stay right along that edge," Hegi said.
Since
1981, Hegi has published 10 books, including six novels, two
collections of short stories, one children's book, and one
book of nonfiction, Tearing The Silence: On Being German
in America, which explores her discomfort over her cultural
identity. Hegi is the recipient of over 30 grants and awards,
including an NEA Fellowship and five PEN Syndicated Fiction
Awards. She was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award for
Stones from the River. She has also written over 100
reviews for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times,
and The Washington Post. For many years, she lived
with her family in Nine Mile Falls, WA, and taught writing
at Eastern Washington University. She now lives on eastern
Long Island.
The Books Etc. series was launched this fall to recognize
the College's remarkable community of faculty, alumnae and
visiting writing instructors. The series, with readings and
remarks by Lynne Tillman, Alice Walker, Jhumpa Lahiri, and
Anna Quindlen, has had a tremendous response with attendance
overall at nearly 3,000 people. The series will continue in
February. Barnard alumna Suki Kim is scheduled to read from
her well-received first novel, The Interpreter, on
February 24, and Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, author of
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, The Commitments, The Snapper
and other novels, will be the guest author on March 9. For
updated information on the schedule of authors for the spring
semester, please visit www.barnard.edu/writers.
Novelist
Ursula Hegi creates her characters much like an actor takes
on a role and these characters become so much a part of her
life that she feels saddened by their loss when she finishes
writing a book.
‘For
me to write about [the character’s] feelings, I need
to become that character," she said. "So, in a sense,
it all happens to me," she said, likening the process
to method acting. At a point, though, the characters start
to take on lives of their own. "I find that when the
characters start to chase me instead of me chasing them, that’s
when they are really alive… You know them in a way you
never know anyone else. You inhabit their soul, their heart."
Since
1981, Hegi has published 10 books, including six novels, two
collections of short stories, one children's book, and one
book of nonfiction, Tearing The Silence: On Being German
in America, which explores her discomfort over her cultural
identity. Hegi is the recipient of over 30 grants and awards,
including an NEA Fellowship and five PEN Syndicated Fiction
Awards. She was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award for
Stones from the River. She has also written over 100
reviews for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times,
and The Washington Post. For many years, she lived
with her family in Nine Mile Falls, WA, and taught writing
at Eastern Washington University. She now lives on eastern
Long Island.