George Saunders, acclaimed author and Syracuse University professor, discusses his creative process and approach to storytelling. Known for his short story collections and the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders has developed a unique methodology for writing that emphasizes reaction over initial creation.

The conversation explores how Saunders wrote A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, his analysis of Russian short stories that emerged from 20 years of teaching notes. He describes his Substack practice of spending two weeks deeply reading each story, which has changed his media consumption habits and made him more protective of his creative intake.

Saunders reveals his spiritual practice in Tibetan Buddhism and how it intersects with his writing philosophy. He discusses the technical aspects of revision, the role of anxiety in creativity, and his belief that the best art emerges from thousands of micro-choices rather than grand intellectual plans.

The Reaction-Based Creative Process

"If I had to boil down creativity, I'd say it's reaction. So I crank out some crap this morning. Doesn't matter what. Tomorrow I look at it and I react to it with a pencil in my hand" - George

Saunders believes great Russian writers in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain created through thousands of micro-choices without intellectually knowing what they were doing, but "somewhere inside they knew"

The process mimics what readers do - when they encounter something wobbly, they notice, and the writer's job is to react to that noticing

"Being a great artist has something to do with creating the maximum number of choice points" where authentic preferences emerge through revision

Starting Stories with Minimal Premises

Lincoln in the Bardo began with just "a two-line outline. Lincoln comes to the crypt, interacts with his son's body, and leaves. Meanwhile, the son shouldn't be here and he is"

"The less word precious... if the thing is front-loaded with meaning, then I don't like it. It'll end up being too narrow" - George prefers starting with almost nothing

Saunders uses the seed crystal analogy from biology - put down something small and "it kind of just spontaneously accretes outward"

"No worthy problem is ever solved on the plane of its original conception" - stories must evolve beyond their initial premise to avoid being "a buzzkill for everybody"

The Subconscious Signals in Draft Problems

"Avoidance moments" occur when stories inject bad language, factual errors, or unwarranted flashbacks - these are the subconscious saying "if you keep going, you're going to fuck up the story"

These problem spots "often speak to each other" - fixing one illuminates and helps fix the others, creating a network of solutions

"The more problems I have and the more unsolvable they are, the better the story is going to be. It's got kind of bigger shoulders" - like Houdini needing real constraints

Problems become more specific as revision progresses - from general issues to "three places that... on a scale of one to 10, when I hit them, they're like sixes"

Fiction vs Nonfiction and Truth-Telling

"Fiction can be more true than nonfiction" because Saunders doesn't like writing anything that would hurt someone's feelings in profiles, but fiction removes that compunction

"There's something about a short story that is so free... it's 100% my phenomenon" - complete creative control allows deeper honesty

With nonfiction, structure emerges from "glow" - whatever writes well gets included, then connections are made between glowing elements

Fiction requires determining "which incidents are essential" and ensuring each structural unit is both entertaining and contributes meaningfully to the story

The Understory vs Overstory in Short Fiction

Short stories have an "overstory" (like will the character get a new overcoat) but the real power comes from an "understory that's coming up all the time that the writer doesn't even understand"

"When you realize we were telling a story about this over here, but actually all along we were talking about this thing" - without knowing it while writing

Stories "create their own context and their own meaning, and then land themselves in a funny way that you couldn't have predicted"

A student's analysis of The refref-book-the-refref-book-the-metamorphosisMetamorphosisrefref-book-the-metamorphosisMetamorphosis - "upon perusing this work of literature, I felt myself in a distinct tilt" - became the seed for one of Saunders' stories