Writing is Hard

Writing is hard for everybody except fools. (The Writer January 2003, From "What I know, for sure ... I think" by Susan Elizabeth Philips.)

One of My Favorite Books: Everything That Rises Must Converge

FAVORITES: Everything That Rises Must Converge (Flannery O’Connor)

The stories “The Enduring Chill” and “Parker’s Back” are masterpieces of construction and meaning. I 've read “The Enduring Chill” over one hundred times and I still see new things.


Everything That Rises Must Converge

The Emotions of a Character

Everything in your story will have greater impact if you have your character interpret it emotionally. Involve the five senses to give your writing strong sensory texture, then make sure you convey you character’s emotional assessment of what she experiences.(From “Fiction’s Connecting Link: Emotion” by Kathy Jacobson from the book The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing.

Does the University Stifle Writers?

Everywhere I go I'm asked if the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. (Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners, HBJ Publishers)

Writing Advice: The Complication

"To be of literary value a complication must be not only basic but also significant to the human condition." (Jon Franklin, WRITING FOR STORY, p.75)

Quote: Opening a Vein

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.(Red Smith)

About the Job of Writing (Amy Bloom)

There's no turning back [when you start writing]. It's good news and bad news. The good news is that if this is what you really want to do, you will do it. The bad news is that however much you may want to do this, nothing more may come of it than the writing itself, so you better really prize that process, because maybe other people will read it and maybe only your writing group will read it. It's very difficult for people to do. There's that great line from Red Smith: "There's nothing to writing. You just sit at the typewriter until drops of blood fall." There's nothing to it but to do it. If you must write, you will. If you're lucky, maybe it'll turn out that you don't have to write. Maybe you could just garden, or do ceramics, or something else. (from an interview with Amy Bloom by Sarah Ann Johnson)

About Tom Wolfe

" . . . inspect [Tom] Wolfe's [author of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and others] dependency on mannerism and iteration. 'Sullenly, sulkily, surily, Roger sank back...'; 'he had suffered a dreadful, shameful, humiliating defeat'; within half-a-dozen lines a dancing girl is described as 'salacious', 'lubricious' and 'concupiscent'. Well, they're all in my thesaurus too. Later on, it occurs to Wolfe that a crowded party is like a sea; so in ten pages, we get a 'regular Typhoon', a 'roaring sea', a 'shrieking sea'. A 'roaring swell' and a 'boiling social sea' (complete with 'boiling teeth' -a steal from BONFIRE). There would also appear to be something wrong with Wolfe's typewriter: a faulty repeater-key, perhaps. Or maybe he meant to write 'Oooooooooo' and 'Ahhhhhhhhh' and 'Nahhhhhhhh' and 'Hmmmmmmmmmmmm'." (Martin Amis in The War against Cliche: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000)

One of My Favorite Books: Of Time and the River

Of Time and the River (Thomas Wolfe)

As I write this journal entry, I'm sitting on my front porch swing with my two St. Bernards looking out into the woods surrounding my home. The woods remind me of this passage from OF TIME AND THE RIVER by Thomas Wolfe:

"All things are lost and broken in the wind: the dry leaves scamper down the path before us, in their swift-winged dance of death the dead souls flee along before us driven with rusty scuffle before the fury of the demented wind. And October has come again, has come again."

OF TIME AND THE RIVER is my favorite book of all time and I believe I picked it up after reading about editorial legend Maxwell Perkins. I wanted to read all the books Perkins ever guided through the editorial process at Scribners. (If you are interested in publishing, I feel it's important to read about the time of Max Perkins. Two suggestions: MAX PERKINS by Scott Andrew Berg, and UNSHAKEN FRIEND by Malcolm Cowley.)

OF TIME AND THE RIVER is a coming of age story that encompasses just about everything in life. A word of warning: It is a tough read. A friend of mine says Wolfe is just too verbose. And to tell the truth, I often find it laborious to wade through the verbiage until I hit a passage that is so striking in its use of language that it is worth the time and attention. What’s fascinating is that when I reread the book, I find sections that did not affect me at all on an earlier read, now make me catch my breath and marvel at Wolfe’s genius all over again.


Of Time and the River: A Legend of Man's Hunger in His Youth

Writing Historical Novels

The journalist Chris Peachment interviewed various novelists about ten years ago about why they were writing historical novels, expecting some answer about paradigms of contemporary reality, and got the same answer from all of them. They wanted to write in a more elaborate, more complex way, in longer sentences, and with more figurative language. (from A.S. Byatt's On Histories and Stories)

Quote: Revising

I have written often, several times, every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasures. (Vladimir Nabokov)

Naipaul & Melancholy

The news Naipaul brings us from far-off and nearby places in The Writer and the World is disquieting more often than not. His writing is suffused with a great melancholy and loneliness, and one feels about him that he is - like the alcoholic consul in Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano - "homesick for being homesick." He has discernible flaws; there is a cruel streak running through many of his observations, and a tendency to overrate the sustenance provided by bourgeois comforts. But his is a many-angled way of seeing the world; he speaks to us in a voice of necessary lament and, unlike so many who set themselves up as secular prophets, he is in no way inauthentic. One can accuse him of an excess of gravitas, but that is precisely his point. For Naipaul is determined to "give us the gloom" as the black woman from North Carolina in the opening of "A Turn in the South" puts it after she listens to a description of the sober book he intends to write about her part of the country whether we like it or not. Even the spurned Theroux concedes, "all his dire warnings have been fulfilled." I suppose one way of shooting the messenger is to parody him or ignore him altogether, but we do so at our own peril. Far wiser, I think, to pay close attention.

from "Suffering, Elemental as Night" by Daphne Merkin a New York Times review of The Writer and the World by V. S. Naipaul

Quote: The Cheap Shot

If you are getting the worst of it in an argument with a literary man, always attack his style. That'll touch him if nothing else will. (J.A. Spender)

A Novelist's Bulls**t Dectector

I do think that all of us have this little bell built into our brains, a bulls**t detector that rings when things are false or wrong, and I think all of us know to respect that. No matter how faint it is, we hear it ringing and we keep working until the damn thing stops. One of the things some of us notice with younger writers in workshops is that they think maybe the bell is wrong. They think they can bring their story into class and everyone else will say, "Don't worry about the bell, it's wrong." But the bell is never wrong. (Peter Carey)

Quote: Revisions

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed. (John Kenneth Galbraith)

Juvenile Novel: Loser

Loser (Jerry Spinelli)


Loser

Donald Zinkoff is truly a memorable character. Spinelli writes the story of Zinkoff in the present tense from first grade to middle school. It is deftly written, for we "feel his pain" as he moves from being a kid without worries to seeing himself as others see him--a loser.

Although I think the snow scene near the end went on too long, the book could clearly give kids, as well as adults who went through those childhood games, a better understanding of the cause and effect of what may seem benign peer pressure to many. OK, I could be prejudiced. I was often the last one picked for recess games.