Madeline Miller is the author of CIRCE and THE SONG OF ACHILLES, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction. On Tuesday, September 10, 2019, she talked with students and teachers and citizens at the Efroymson Center for Creative Writing at Butler University. Since you couldn’t make it, I took notes for you (you’re welcome). Quotes are as precise as I could make them, but keep in mind that she talks fast and I write slow.

When you’re [writing] a retelling, you can be successful by getting close to the material or getting far away. Faithfulness is not a measurement of success. I work very close to the material, but also (in writing CIRCE) I felt free to push back against Homer.

If a male is struggling [in a story], that is considered plot. If a woman is struggling, people say, “There’s nothing happening in this chapter.”

The difference between writers and non-writers are that writers go back again and again. My old classics teacher used to say that the people who succeeded in classics were the people with the highest tolerance for failure. I think the same is true for writers.

My husband is a master carpenter. When I asked him if master carpenters make fewer mistakes than regular carpenters, he said no–but they recognize [the mistakes] more quickly. It’s the same for writers as they gain experience.