Jennifer Homans
/How did you become a writer?
I became a writer by being a shy person and a dancer. I am very internal and have always liked to sit alone in dark theaters watching dance and scribbling thoughts. Or performing, which is also a very private experience, even (or because) it is for a public. Writing is always for me a way of thinking – I don't know what I am going to “say” before I write it. Dance mattered because, somehow, the direct connection between seeing or moving and the task of describing my own thoughts in the moment, as a thing, but also as an effect on my own being, is something private and natural to me. I see better and feel more when I write it down. I have ideas when I move to music, and often took a pen and paper with me to dance classes. The process was so private that I never imagined I would share my writing, and to this day, I feel oddly surprised when I see my work in print. When I am writing, no one else is there, just me (barely) and the material. In this sense, it is very much like dancing.
Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).
This is hard – there are so many, and each project brings its own library of influences. Here are a few. Some are dances and dancers; art and music: The dances of George Balanchine. The dancing and teaching of Suzanne Farrell, Melissa Hayden, Maria Tallchief. I have always learned from art – especially painting and sculpture. Recently, Russian literature, especially Tolstoy. Cervantes. Don Quixote. Henry James. William James. So many more.
When and where do you write?
I write at home, usually beginning very early in the morning through early afternoon, with breaks to walk, snack, pace, and talk to myself. I began this way because I didn't have an office or job to go to; later I had young children and wanted to be near them, even if someone else was caring for them so that I could write. Now that I do have an office, I still write mostly at home. I use the floor a lot – for notes, spread out in a sea around me – and I am often on the floor, talking to the pages and moving them around like pieces of a puzzle.
What are you working on now?
At the moment I am working on finding a new subject, which for me means trying out ideas by living with them for a time to see which sift to the bottom and which stay with me. I try to be open and let fate and chance play a role – I don't want to miss a subject that might surprise me. I try to follow my body and go where it takes me – not in a meditative sense, but literally: Where do I find myself standing?
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?
No. I see writing as a craft and if I am stuck, I just keep at it. I don't think of it as writer's block, just a bad day. There are many!
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
Keep going. Stay at your desk and fight it out, BUT also know when to stop and take a walk, go on a trip, get on a train, or go to a gallery. The best ideas usually come to me when I am not at my desk. It is a balancing act, and I try not to get stuck in my own tenaciousness.
What’s your advice to new writers?
Write about something you care about and want to know more about. Do not write about yourself unless you have a rare talent and something unusual to say. Curiosity and delight in learning is for me a key; it takes me out of myself.
Jennifer Homans is the dance critic and a contributing writer for The New Yorker. She is the author of Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022) and Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. Trained in dance at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, she performed professionally with the Pacific Northwest Ballet before earning a BA at Columbia University and a PhD in modern European history at New York University, where she is currently a Scholar in Residence and the Founding Director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts.
