Tag Archive for ‘Thoughts’
Why Do I Even Want to Write a Novel?
With a challenging, fulfilling job and a satisfying personal life, Anne Burt questions her desire to write a novel – and finds the answer in an unexpected place: Motivation has always been as cruel to me as it has been – well – motivating. I’ve been motivated to write because: I imagine glory when the world reads my masterpiece; I need to act out some childhood revenge fantasy about surpassing my father; I have a contorted sense that immortality is [...]
Roxana Robinson on Writing About Place
Reading Roxana Robinson’s latest novel, Cost, I was struck by how beautifully and naturally she writes about place, from the coast of Maine to the streets of New York. Consider this, for example – a coastal view from the perspective of a painter: “Julia’s studio was in the barn overlooking the meadow. Through the big picture window she had painted this many times, the rich rippling grass, the moving water beyond it, the glittering sea-bright light…. For the meadow, for [...]
Writing Past the Blind Spot
Last week Bonnie Friedman found out something big … As soon as I finished writing my guest post for this blog last week about how “people don’t do such things,” I put the computer in “sleep” mode, stood up, and the answer to the question I was secretly asking washed through me. Why couldn’t I really believe that people in the world do mean and otherwise outrageous things (things that, if I could believe in them, I could let my characters [...]
Three Ways to Push Through When You're Stuck
Writer Julie Metz offers some hard-won advice: Like many of you, I am working on a new writing project, a novel. What made me think I could do this, anyway? But here I am, too far in to let go, committed to my characters. Some days are thrilling, but lately I often find myself stuck, wondering how I will push out the next sentence. My first book, published last year, was a memoir titled Perfection. The great thing about writing [...]
What's the Big Idea?
How do you come up with an idea that’s big enough to sustain a novel or memoir? And how do you know when you’ve got it? As a teacher of creative writing, I get asked this question a lot – and as a novelist, I can tell you that it torments every one of my beginnings. A few days ago I put this question to the writer Katharine Weber, whose new novel, True Confections, was hailed by the Times Book [...]
"The Vertical Motion of Consciousness"
In which Annie Dillard articulates the seemingly inexpressible, discussing what she likes about writing fiction: “The interior life is in constant vertical motion; consciousness runs up and down the scales every hour like a slide trombone. It dreams down below; it notices up above; and it notices itself, too, and its own alertness. The vertical motion of consciousness, from inside to outside to back, interests me.” (from To Fashion a Text)
What Chekhov Can Teach Us about Endings
Fiction writer David Jauss analyzes Chekhov’s endings and explains why they were revolutionary at the time — and what we can learn from them today: Early in his writing life, Anton Chekhov became convinced that new kinds of endings were necessary in literature. While writing Ivanov, his first major play, he complained to his publisher about conventional endings—“Either the hero gets married or shoots himself”—and concluded, “Whoever discovers new endings for plays will open up a new era.” And that [...]
What Makes a Book Great? A Voracious Reader Shares Her Insights
From October 2008 to October 2009, Nina Sankovitch read one book a day and wrote about it on her blog, Read All Day. After learning about this project in a New York Times article, I went to Nina’s site and found some terrific insights into what makes a book great – so I asked Nina if I could adapt them here: The traits of great writing are: genuineness, truth, fearlessness. Say it out loud: no fear. Let your words flap [...]
Learning From the Masters
The essence of art is sensitivity. How does one retain the freshness of sensitivity? Answer: By working without worry, freely. How does one work freely? By possessing a technique which permits one to work spontaneously: it is necessary, therefore, to possess the elements of this technique. Meditation in front of the works of the masters puts one in possession of the eternal rules of art. Once these rules are learned there is nothing left but to know how to apply [...]
Guest Blog: Essayist Maureen Stanton on Why Insight is the Last Thing to Come
For this writer, the creative process happens in stages – and the final one makes all the difference: The first is the molecular stage, that early collection of bits of information, what I find fascinating, unusual, funny or poignant at the time it occurs, whether I retain it in memory or in a physical form on pieces of paper. The critical mass stage is next. The particles are vibrating on their own in proximity to one another until they reach [...]
