Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even…
Category: Writing
Like Living In A House Full Of Ghosts
Writing a novel is like living in a house full of ghosts — even when you ignore them, they’re still there, waiting to talk to you. They have all the time in the world. No matter how much you avoid…
Imagine Your Readers Over Your Shoulder
We suggest that whenever anyone sits down to write he should imagine a crowd of his prospective readers (rather than a grammarian in cap and gown) looking over his shoulder. They will be asking such questions as: “What does this…
Like a criminal
All the time I’m not writing I feel like a criminal…. It’s much more relaxing to actually write. -FRAN LEBOWITZ
Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.
ANNE ENRIGHT
Update
It’s coming up on 5 months since inspiration struck for my current project, Starshine. Progress slowed considerably due to the holidays, but I’m back at it. Word count is right about 30k. By comparison, it took me 4 years to…
What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.
C.S. LEWIS
A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.
STENDHAL