Celeste Ng and Jennifer Egan Literary Discussion was Enlightening , Engaging and Rewarding

Jennifer Egan, author of "Manhattan Beach" and Celeste Ng author of "Little Fires Everywhere" were in discussion with each other regarding their writing processes with insights into their latest novels.  Egan's previous novel "A Visit from the Goon Squad" received the Pulitzer Prize. Ng's debut  novel "Everything I never Told You" won the ALA's Alex Award & the Asian/Pacific American Award.  Ms. Egan, the veteran writer of the two women having published 5 novels requested Ms Ng to be the guest speaker with her.  Their mutual admiration society was earnest & well deserved.  The 2 writers  had a fascinating & frank conversation describing their techniques & tribulations.  To begin the evening, actresses read only a small portion from each new novel.  Having read both, I was impressed by the small portion selected.  Both were significant to the moral dilemma of "Little Fires..." and the main character in "Manhattan..."  Celeste began by lauding "A Visit..." for stretching the boundaries of art & storytelling and then praised Jennifer for her mastery of writing a historic epic novel set in the 1940s.   Jennifer confessed she found writing in a conventional style more difficult than "Goon..."  She writes voluminous pages illegible longhand, then types them out & then begins to draw several outlines.  Her writing & rewriting becomes  subtractive.  With "Goon..." Jennifer said it was easier to write in fragments and then return to them rather than maintaining a continuum in "Manhattan".  She is initially drawn to a time and place and then finds the characters that would fit into an epoch. She knew she wanted a strong female heroine in NY during WWII.   She noted she intended to place the heroine Anna, her severely disabled sister and Eddie, a gangster together on Manhattan Beach.  She admitted it was a stretch.  I found it a preposterous, incredulous scenario but it moved the narrative.  Celeste's writing process is a loose frame work of events and characters.  She then goes back to fill in how the characters relate to each other and how they arrived at their behaviors.  For the most part, Celeste said she has pondered her characters & plot in her head before putting words to type.  The women shared their reliance on being in long term writing groups with the same people.  Sometimes they request the group be cheerleaders and offer only praise on what is working.  Other times, they share a portion of their novel and listen to whom or what their peers become focused.  Celeste said she was directed by her group away from making one of the characters feel too strongly as the aggrieved party in a paternity litigation.  Sometimes, they ask for pressure to hold them accountable for deadlines.  Celeste admits to trying to discern from other writers the magical process that empowers the writer, to which they both resolved is doing the work:  research, writing, rewriting and garnering helpful & supportive editing.  I would very much like to volunteer to be a member of either's writing group.