Who: Scott Newstok

Claim To Fame: Scott Newstok is professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College. A parent and an award-winning teacher, he is the author of the just-released How to Think Like Shakespeare, as well as Quoting Death in Early Modern England, and the editor of several other books.

Where To Find Scott: His Website, Amazon

Praise For Scott: “Insightful and joyful, this book is a masterpiece. It invokes and provokes rather than explains. It reminds rather than lectures. It is different from any book I have ever read. And it works. Drawing on the past in the best sense of the term, it reminds us that we are part of a long tradition. Few books make the case for liberal education as creatively as this one does.” — Johann N. Neem, author of What’s the Point of College? Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform

When do you like to write? Are you regimented about your writing routine?

As a procrastinating student, I used to think I wrote best in the evenings. Maybe, maybe not . . . but now that I’m a mid-life fogey, my head seems clearest early in the morning, before my family wakes. That’s not a terribly regimented routine, but it works well enough.

Where do you like to write? What does your ideal work environment look like?

Silent, in seclusion, and surrounded by my books. All three are rare! But occasionally they converge: in my college office; in a basement closet; ideally, at lakeside cabin.

[*] Silent: like the cranky Arthur Schoepenhauer, I feel something akin to pain at the sudden sharp crack, which paralyzes the brain, rends the thread of reflection, and murders thought.

[*] In seclusion: as Virginia Woolf knew, all writers need (and women have chronically lacked) a room of [their] own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room.

[*] Surrounded by my books: like Montaigne, without order, without method, and by peece-meales I turne over and ransacke, now one booke and now another.

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits before you sit down to write?

Does compulsively responding to email count? If not, then nope. Well, I take that back — because Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body, I like to stretch myself by reviewing a writer whom I admire.

What do you do when the writing isn’t coming easy? Do you struggle at all with that dreaded enemy of writing: writer’s block?

I tend to do more research. This can become a crutch; I know I read far too much in proportion to how little I write. But I can’t help it — I really enjoy it, and every time I chance upon a new insight, it enriches what I’m doing.

That, or I go for a walk. As Rebecca Solnit discerned: Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.

Your new book How To Think like Shakespeare is full of the habits and practices vital in Shakespeare’s intellectual formation. What are some of the greatest lessons that you retained from his approach to writing?

I’ve spoken elsewhere about commonplacing. To that I’d add the practice of copia.  “Copia” gives us “copy”—what (thanks to Xerox) we take for an exact reproduction. Yet “copia” in Shakespeare’s era was more akin to the copiousness that we associate with a “horn of plenty,” or cornucopia.

In a fireworks display of verbal agility, Erasmus rings the changes on the phrase tuae litterae me magnopere delectarunt, Your letter has pleased me greatly, which he modulates through different verbs, adjectives, word order . . . into over 140 variations!

My students laugh when they see his over-the-top list of permutations. But copia’s exercise in variation makes you appreciate (and expand) the range of possibility, in order to say it right. Per Orwell, if you just let the ready-made phrases come crowding in to your mind,

They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

What is your method for researching and organizing material you might want to use for your future writing?

“Method” might be a bit strong! Mainly I just try to gather as much as I can, let it simmer in my mind (and in my commonplace notebook), and then see what patterns emerge. Where are clusters of thoughts? What’s the most compelling way to present this? That’s about it, honestly.

You are also an English professor. How does teaching the craft help you in your own writing career? What are some common mistakes you see aspiring writers make?

Since I teach at a small college, with no graduate students, all of my classes are writing-intensive seminars, with regular (often daily) assignments and feedback. I like how this keeps me sharp: I must practice what I preach.

Aspiring undergraduates often emulate what they perceive to be “academic” writing—some of the very habits I’m trying to shake! Here’s just one instance of mealy-mouthed academese that I keep trying to avoid: the phrase it is no accident that. Wait, what? Do you mean that it’s . . . what? . . . fated? . . . over-determined? I don’t know. A phrase like this strikes me as duplicitous, even cowardly. Say it; don’t insinuate it. You can’t get credit for not stating something’s deliberate, yet hinting that it is!

What books or writers have most influenced the way you think and the way you write? Do you have any favorite books about the craft of writing or the creative process in general?

That’s tough. Like most writers, I presume, I’ve gone through phases where I just had to read everything I could find by a favorite author, whether that happened to be Willa Cather, Pauline Kael, Stanley Cavell, Elizabeth Bishop, J. M. Coetzee, Kenneth Burke, or Robert Walser. With Emily Dickinson, I thank these Kinsmen of the Shelf.

In terms of teaching, I find Alastair Fowler’s How to Write full of pithy suggestions, most of which work.

What is your advice to aspiring writers?

Little more than what Werner Herzog advises aspiring filmmakers: Read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it.

For more detailed guidance, I endorse what Lydia Davis enjoins: Go to primary sources and go to the great works to learn technique. . . .  Read the best writers: maybe it would help to set a goal of one classic per year at least. Classics have stood the test of time, as we say. Keep trying them, if you don’t like them at first — come back to them.  . . . How should you read? What should the diet of your reading be? Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion—you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.

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