Seek out passions, writer says

OREM — Young writers should seek out their passions and stick to them, novelist Marilynne Robinson said Friday at a reading of her latest book.

"The only conclusion that I can draw from my own experience is that you have to — this sounds so stupid — you have to find your own way," Robinson, whose novel "Gilead" won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, told a Utah Valley State College audience. "No good writer sounds like anybody else."

After reading a passage of "Gilead," Robinson answered questions about her inspiration to write, her philosophy on religion and her roots as a writer.

Robinson, who currently teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa, said she began writing poetry as a child.

"I especially wrote during storms and also in the bathtub," she said. "Those were my two loci of inspiration."

Poetry did not become her life's calling, though.

"It was very exciting to me, writing poetry," she said. "But I realized at one point that I was bad at it."

A similar realization led her to can a writing project while in college, but, after finishing graduate school, she published her first novel. "Housekeeping" was named as one of the New York Times Books of the Century and listed as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time by the UK Guardian Observer.

The novel's reception came as a surprise to Robinson.

"I assumed I was writing an unpublishable novel," she said.

After "Housekeeping" hit the shelves in 1981, Robinson didn't take another stab at fiction for about 25 years.

"I hadn't felt like writing fiction in a long time," said Robinson, who wrote essays and book reviews during much of her time away from fiction.

While in a hotel in Massachusetts one winter, though, inspiration hit her and she began to write.

"I suddenly had this thought, or whatever it was, of an elderly man at a desk writing a letter to a child," she said.

That man became the main character of "Gilead." Robinson said she doesn't plan plots, but rather lets the characters dictate the story.

"I feel much more as if novels happen to me than a motivation (which) causes me to write them," she said.

Robinson advised aspiring writers to follow their interests and not worry about prizes, or even publication, while writing.

"I always tell my students, 'When you're up to bat, you can't be writing your acceptance letter to the Baseball Hall of Fame,"' she said. "You have to have your mind over what your doing."

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