Recently, a group of UD undergraduate and graduate students had the opportunity to hear two celebrated and respected authors, Salman Rushdie and Joyce Carol Oates, share their ideas on the creative writing process.

The students were part of a group of more than 60 high school and college students, all identified by their respective faculty as having demonstrated an interest in and a talent for writing, who attended a Community.

Conversation program in the Hotel du Pont’s Learning Center in Wilmington, Del. During the 90-minute discussion, students had the opportunity to ask the authors how they transform basic ideas to finished works. The authors also shared their views on the value of inspiration and solitude as nurturing agents in the creative writing process.

“You have to be at some quiet dimension, and then you will get ideas that you don’t know you have,” Oates said. “A story might start to coalesce early, while a novel takes  a long time.”

Ideas and inspiration may come from a single sentence that pops into the mind and refuses to go away, Rushdie said. “This gives way to people and what their story is,” he said.

Megan Fernandes, AS ’07, said both speakers were eloquent with their responses. “Rushdie was blunt, but he had such an elegant control of language, which reflected such a level of sincerity that I think he convinced his audience of what he was saying,” Fernandes said. “What I liked about Oates was how expressive she seemed. She talked a lot with her hands, and you could see her thinking carefully about her answers, which were very philosophical, even when the questions were simple.”