PORTLAND, Maine — After running into Richard Russo on the streets of Portland a year or two ago, I asked him what he’d been up to lately. “Still scribbling,” he said with a laugh.
The effort paid off, and Russo is now out with his latest novel, “Somebody’s Fool,” the third volume in a trilogy that began three decades ago with the acclaimed “Nobody’s Fool.” And, yes, the final product was actually created by scribbling.
“I love to write in longhand,” he said. “I love the feel of a pen.”
“Somebody’s Fool” is Russo’s tenth novel, and when you add in his memoirs, essays, and screenplays for television and movies, it adds up to an impressive body of work. And yet, he doesn’t spend all that much time writing.
On a workday morning, he typically writes for a couple of hours with pen and paper. In the afternoon, he switches to modern technology and editing and rewriting as he goes, spends two more hours putting what he wrote in the morning into a computer.
“Then I read,” he said. “But that’s a full day for me. I’m always embarrassed to answer that question [of how much time is spent writing each day] because it makes me look so lazy. But a lot of my writing life takes place when I’m walking, when I’m reading.”
The routine clearly works, in part because Russo loves spending time with his fictional characters, especially Sully Sullivan, who is based on his father and appears in all three novels in the trilogy.
“When you’re surrounded by [characters] who are just so much fun and so entertaining,” Russo said, “it just makes the journey so much more pleasant.”