John Irving on how he writes & the thrill of the blank page

My previous post was a clip from the BigThink website of an interview with novelist John Irving about the qualities that helped make him a writer. In other parts of the interview he said his writing schedule, when he’s not travelling or interrupted by domestic demands, is to get up early and work for eight or nine hours a day.

 He never begins a novel until he’s written the last sentence—in twelve novels not even the punctuation of that last sentence has changed. He uses that as a roadmap from which to work backward.

 Here’s what he says about the thrill of the blank page: