Ryan Blacketter

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Ryan is the author of Down in the River and Horses All Over Hell. 

In J.T. Bushnell's Poets & Writers article "The Thousand Pages," he reflects on something Ryan said years ago: that he threw away a thousand pages of his first book, Down in the River, before he was done. 

Full text available: https://www.pw.org/content/the_thousand_... 

“. . . Around this time a friend, Ryan Blacketter, sent me the manuscript of what would become his own first novel, Down in the River (Slant, 2014). I knew he had written only short stories until then, so I was impressed at how well built his novel was--how sturdy its foundation, how varied and efficient its architecture, how high its pinnacle. When I told him how much I admired it, he thanked me, then said, ‘I've thrown away a thousand pages, but none of them were wasted.’

“At first I thought he meant the number as hyperbole. Kill your darlings and all that. But he meant it literally, and when I understood this, my reaction surprised me. Rather than feeling intimidated by such a gargantuan number, I felt heartened. All I had to do was write a thousand pages? I might not know how to build a novel, I thought, but I knew how to put my butt in a chair and words on a page. . . The quality of Blacketter’s novel impressed me because I’d read many other first manuscripts from friends and acquaintances that were not as well built . . .”

https://www.pw.org/content/mayjune_2021