“The goal always is to write.” American Philipp Meyer – author of the bestselling novel ‘The Son’ – reveals why he doesn’t believe that a ‘writer’s block’ exists, and how starting a novel is a matter of drowning out your inner critic.
To put words down – whether that be on a computer screen or a piece of paper – is the whole point of being a writer: “Anything that gets in the way of that goal is bad.” When you’re having difficulties writing, you can chiefly blame yourself: “It’s basically insecurity. It’s your own internal critic turned up to a higher level than it’s supposed to be at that moment,” says Meyer. When you’re starting a new book and facing a blank page “your critic has to be turned down to zero.” Only when writing without considering other voices than your own, can the story and its characters truly form.
Philipp Meyer (b. 1974) is an American novelist. Meyer’s first novel, ‘American Rust’ (2009), won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and his second novel, ‘The Son’ (2013), was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in Literature and has been on the bestseller list in several countries. Meyer is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010), a Doie Paisano Fellowship (2010) and in the same year he was named one of The New Yorker’s 20 best writers under 40. He lives in Austin, Texas. Find out more about him here: http://www.philippmeyer.net/
Philipp Meyer was interviewed by Tonny Vorm in connection to the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in August 2014.
Camera: Mathias Nyholm, Nikolaj Jungersen and Klaus Elmer
Produced and edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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