Interview with Anne Bernays

Advice on writing, workshopping, and how to be your own best editor.

Anne Bernays at her home in Cambridge, MA

Anne Bernays is a former Harvard educator, the author of ten novels, and co-author of three nonfiction books. Her book Growing Up Rich won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for significant Jewish-American fiction. Her second novel, Professor Romeo, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In the education community, however, she is probably best known in the education community for co-authoring What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers.

At ninety-three Anne still runs a private writing workshop. We met online to discuss her passion for writing, teaching, and her unique style as a facilitator.

B.A. Durham

In your workshop you focus on the critiquer as much as the story being critiqued. You push the readers to be specific when explaining why the story works, why it doesn’t work, and what would make it better. Why focus so much on the readers and not entirely on the story?

Anne Bernays

It seems to me that unless you can be your own best editor you're going to flop. To become a better editor you need to be able to read other people’s prose and spot the errors as well as the good things. I avoid questions like, "Do you like this or not?” Instead, I emphasize what works and what doesn’t.

It's like doing physical exercises. It's the exercise of being able to criticize other people. And criticism is not a negative thing. Most people think that if you criticize somebody it means that you’re finding all of the bad spots. But it doesn't mean that. It means to be able to analyze why it works or why it doesn’t. Why is one word a better word than another word? That sort of thing. It’s very, very specific. That’s why our book, What If? focuses on practical exercises.

Standard version

College textbook (with selected stories)

Durham

Why emphasize exercises over theory?

Bernays

It's not very helpful for beginning writers to get theory. What they need is practice getting words right. The theory comes much later. Theory is like the wonderful smell off of a good beef stew. You think you know what's going on there and you want some, but you have to know the ingredients first. You have to be able to chop them in the right way. You have to know what to add and what not to add until the right time. It is a painstaking process.

I taught with Mary Oliver one summer at Wesleyan. She is a wonderful poet. When I asked her how she taught poetry, she said, ‘I teach by exercises.’

It seems to focus people and not threaten them. If you're just told to go home and write a story about mother-daughter relationships you would be up the creek. If you have a very specific exercise—say, the mother is having an affair and the daughter just found out—then that suggests a story. You’ve got to make the exercises specific enough so that they suggest something.

Durham

You have your students read their stories out loud in class instead of submitting them in advance for everyone to read. Have you tried both ways? What are the advantages of having students read out loud?

Bernays

I have always done it this way. I have never, never asked my students to read the manuscript and comment on it without having heard it first. The ear detects the mistakes and the good parts more easily than the eye. If there is a rhythm to the sentence you can hear it but you can't really see it.

I have only taken one writing class and that was the last semester of my senior year at college. So I've only been in a class once, but the teacher was incredible. Just incredible. She never criticized. She would come in for your conference, and she would ask, ‘What did you mean by this?’ Everything was a question. There wasn't a single ‘that’s wrong’ or ‘this is good.’ It was harrowing. She also had us read aloud in class.

I just figured out by trial and error that it helps tremendously with revisions. However, some people are reluctant to read out loud and some shy students have great difficulty doing it. With practice, however, it gets easier, and then they start to enjoy it.

Virginia Berman once revised an exercise called I Met Him on the Stairs. She wrote about leaving her apartment and how there was an old man fixing things on the stairs. It was absolutely beautiful. She got it! I was so pleased. And that was a rewrite after reading aloud in class.

Durham

It sounds like you're saying it is intuitive, and if you can relax, the writing just kind of happens. Is there a way to coax it out?  

Bernays

Have you heard of the alpha state? There's consciousness, there is unconsciousness, and right between them is something called the alpha state.

It is like when you first wake up in the morning and have to focus: What day is this? Where do I have to go today? You start bringing all the parts of your memory and your expectations together. It's not quite conscious and it's not unconscious. That's the state you should try for. The rest falls away and you relax. You get into a—a really lovely space.

That's what you want to try when you're writing. Forget the teacher in you. Forget the self-criticism. Forget the ‘Oh my God, why am I doing this?’ or the ‘Nobody's going to like it.’

Durham

It sounds like Transcendental Meditation.

Bernays

It is like that. Everything that is not relevant goes. When you're in a storytelling mode, or you’re just thinking, he did this, and then he did that... then they dropped this, and then they heard a horn…, it becomes like automatic writing. And the first drafts are usually pretty messy for that reason.

Then you have to be totally conscious to be a self-editor. I know when somebody's reading their first draft. It's obvious. These things typically have to be worked on. I have been teaching since 1975 and I've had about two or three what I call natural writers. There are not many but I've had them. James Burke is one of them. Somehow the gift has formed in a way that he almost can't write a bad sentence. It is just amazing.

Durham

What is the formula for a good sentence?

Bernays

I don't think there is one. But when it happens, you know.

Durham

We do have some elements, though, right? We have the rhythm and the sound of it.  We want to watch out for descriptors, adjectives, and adverbs…

Bernays

Most of it is about what not to do—negative things. Don't use too many adjectives, adverbs, or gerunds. Don’t use words ending in “-ing” except in specific cases.

The only positive one is to tell the truth. Be honest. Be as honest as you can even if it sounds horrible to you. To a certain extent, everybody has poison in them, and we all have to live with it.

But there are people who say, “I don't want to write about that because it's ugly…” This may be honest as far as your own mental health goes but as far as fiction goes you can't be dishonest. Readers can tell when a writer is being dishonest. The writing is either too flowery or too abstract; there are a lot of big words, or there is a lot of writing in the passive voice.

Durham

You have some advice for some students whose writing contains those embellishments. You say to “tell it like a thirteen-year-old.” Could you elaborate on what that means and what it does?

Bernays

If the teacher said, “Go out on a walk and write about anything unusual or interesting that you see,” a thirteen-year-old will focus closely on what they find. He or she won’t necessarily see the cloudy sky, the boat, the folks by the river, or anything like that. He or she will be very focused on whatever they are looking at.

Scenery is more advanced. You want to use the scenery around you to reflect the personality and mood of the main character or of several characters.

“It was a dark and stormy night.” That's supposed to be a terrible opening. My husband—who was a terrific writer—said, “It's always held out as a terrible way to start something. I think it's wonderful.”

Durham

And what makes it wonderful?

Bernays

Because you're already in a dark and stormy night! And you know that it's not going to be hearts and flowers. All you know is that you want to get out of this dark and stormy night. It telegraphs the mood.

I would advise reading Henry Green's short stories because he is a masterful storyteller—absolutely brilliant. In the first paragraph he will create the most amazing moods without being obvious about it. I recommend analyzing his writing.

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Anne Bernays is the daughter of Edward Bernays, the “Father of Public Relations.” Her husband, Justin Kaplan, was a biographer and general editor of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Her mother, Doris Fleischman, was a writer and feminist who famously signed her maiden name in the Waldorf Astoria’s guest book on her honeymoon. Anne Bernays is also Sigmund Freud’s grand-niece.