If you are looking for writing inspiration, read The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. It’s about writers, how they relate to one another, and how they engage with the larger world. It’s a great read for anyone who is writing just now.
The narrator of The Friend is grief stricken over the suicide of her friend and fellow author, a man who was her mentor and writing teaching decades earlier. Though she lives in a tiny apartment, and is not particularly a dog person, she is talked into adopting the dead man’s Great Dane.
Writing Inspiration from Dogs and Men
While the presence of the dog influences how she reflects on the death (Great Danes do not live long and this one, Apollo, is already middle aged), most of what she reflects on is the value of writing, whether authors are valued in society, and many of the current ethical issues surrounding authors and college professors. Is it OK for people to write outside their own experience? What of male writing teachers who have relationships with their students? Are they predators? Are they bad writers? Is it OK to use the lives of friends in your writing? (Reminding the reader of Anne Lamott’s famous words: “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”) There are no answers given, but the ruminations on these subjects will be familiar, and it’s nice to engage without screaming or being screamed at.
Writing Inspiration from Quotes
Another reason for writers to read this novel is that it is full of quotations from authors, as well as some discussion of the lives of famous writers. If you are stuck for new ideas, you might find some of these stories and quotes inspirational.
If you happen to love dogs, that’s a bonus. I was looking through reviews of The Friend on GoodReads. It seemed that people who aren’t writers thought the novel was OK, but had too much rumination by the narrator. Some complained that they’d been led to understand The Friend was a book about dogs, and there wasn’t enough about dogs, that Apollo rarely appears in the book. Honestly, there’s a lot of discussion of the dog, who does appear quite frequently (but he is not anthropomorphized, so maybe that was their real issue).
I think these responses point to the reality that the people who will give The Friend five of five stars are writers, readers of serious fiction, and literary hopefuls. That’s you. And those who awarded it the National Book Award this year.
The Friend is such a lovely work. Read it.
For more literature based writing inspiration, check my post on The Buried Giant.