Famous recluse Harper Lee had some amazing writing advice.
Harper Lee delivered one of the most quintessentially American novels in To Kill a Mockingbird, and it was turned into a fabulous movie by Horton Foote and Robert Mulligan. That title has shaken the world since it came out. The book gets banned, people argue about its meaning, all while behind the scenes, Lee just lived her life in a small southern town. Lee was a notorious recluse, once telling Oprah Winfrey that the character she was most like in the book was not Scout, but the unseen neighbor Boo Radley.
Still, in the early years after Mockingbird‘s publishing, Lee did make the rounds.
Open Culture recently dug up this 1964 interview for WQXR’s Counterpoint, where she gives advice to young writers. Lee talks about writing in a very honest way, saying, “I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.”
Check out the whole interview below, and let’s talk after.
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
