'The raw material for creativity'

 

“I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.” – Chaim Potok

Potok, who was born on this date in 1929, is most famous for his first book The Chosen, published in 1967 and listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 consecutive weeks. 

 

Raised in a strict Jewish household, Potok was encouraged to only read and study Orthodox Jewish writings by his parents.  But after reading Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited as a teenager, he said he knew that he wanted to be a writer in the same fashion as Waugh, who became his lifelong writing hero and role model.  He produced his first fiction at the age of 16, and at age 17 he made his first submission to the magazine The Atlantic Monthly. Although it wasn't published, he received a note from the editor complimenting his work, something all writers hope for but rarely have happen when they receive a rejection.   

 

Potok, who died in 2002, said he thought the hardest part of writing was revising.   “And by that I mean the following: A novelist, like a sculptor, has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.”