#196: Missouri Williams — Writing Strange and Ambitious Fiction, Doubt as a Generative Force, and Why Idleness Is Essential to Creativity

Award-winning novelist Missouri Williams on writing strange and ambitious fiction, treating doubt as a generative force, and why idleness is essential to creative work. We discuss How a destabilising illness and a new language can reshape a writer’s whole relationship to words. Why style isn’t something you construct so much as a way of seeing you’re partly stuck with. The case for drafting without thinking about the end result and keeping the stakes low. What an image you can’t stop returning to can reveal about the book you need to write. When idleness and empty, unproductive time become the most essential part of the work. How doubt can function as a generative engine rather than a block. A method for layering instability into a narrator who sounds completely in control. What a chorus can do on the page that a single narrator can’t. Why being placed outside your depth, where everything has to be relearned, can sharpen a writer. The difference between doubting your work and doubting your right to do it at all. Resources & Links 📑 Interview Transcript Missouri’s Instagram Sisters of Mercy’s song, “Flood II” The Vivisectors King Lear with Sheep The Doloriad Missouri’s Agent John Ash Samuel Beckett Ágota Kristóf 2023 Winner of Republic of Consciousness Foundation “Form Is Back” Meditations by René Descartes Dead Ink publisher The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser The Republic by Plato About Missouri Williams Missouri Williams is the author of The Doloriad, which won the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a best book of 2022 by Vulture. Her work has also appeared in The Nation, The Baffler, The Believer, Granta, and The Drift. Her newest book is The Vivisectors. For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.*FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALONTwitter: twitter.com/​​WritersSalonInstagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalonFacebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalonIf you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!