A Writer’s Fixation on Sound
It’s not that it was easy for R. O. Kwon to write The Incendiaries, her debut novel. The book took 10 years to finish, and along the way she faced many of the challenges first-time authors do: self-doubt, creative failure, awkward questions from friends and family about her progress. But, in a conversation for this series, Kwon explained that she was able to weather the struggles of her book’s prolonged development by focusing on the simple, profound joys of working with language—an essential pleasure she feels is perhaps best expressed in a letter by Edith Wharton.
Kwon’s obsession with rhythm and sound shows on every page of The Incendiaries, a book written in short sections that glimmer with the sharpness and density of finely wrought gems. But this hyper-attentiveness to language has not always been an asset, and it took a timely lesson from the writer Lauren Groff for Kwon to learn when to loosen up, and when to fixate on each syllable. We discussed how language itself can be a distraction from everyday anxieties, why she records herself reading her work out loud, and how she knew it was time to stop changing the words and admit the book was finished.
begins with an explosion, a building destroyed by a bomb while onlookers
