Have you ever readDavid Sedaris' work and thought, “I wanna write something like that!”
Well, your wish just became a little more obtainable.
“I do what I do, but I don’t know how I do it.
Drew Gurian
So just what does he know?
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you approach preparing to teach this class?
I went to school myself, but I took four creative writing classes and that was it.
I feel like the rest of it I just kind of learned from reading and I learned from editors.
It’s like somebody says to me, “Oh, that’s a nice metaphor.”
I don’t even know what that means.
I don’t even know what a metaphor is.
So I guess I just had to think differently in terms of what I traditionally think of as knowledge.
What did you learn about yourself during this process?
I don’t know what to say.
“Well, what do you write about?”
I don’t know what to say.
I’ve never had to put it in words that way.
So, yeah, I guess it did make me think a bit differently.
How do I know the answer to this question?”
What did you think of the students' questions?
The questions were really good and they were all really surprising.
They weren’t like questions that you would normally get, say, on an interview.
No writer has ever asked another writer that question.
No writer, no creative writer, has ever asked another creative writer that question.
What did you consider most important that you impart upon your students?
I taught for a couple of years in the late 1980s.
I taught creative writing at the school that I graduated from, and I wasn’t necessarily qualified to.
Sedaris' Masterclass is now available atMasterClass.com.
