compulsive reverence for the written word
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise-versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. Remember that for all the books we have in print, are as many that have never reached print, have never been written down — even now, in this age of compulsive reverence for the written word, history, even social ethic, are taught by means of stories, and the people who have been conditioned into thinking only in terms of…
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Writing rules
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
Ralph Daigh
Maybe You Should Write a Book
(Somerset Maugham is credited by Daigh with making this statement. In fact Daigh was the true originator of the quote not Maugham).
(july 7, 1979)
Source: (july 7, 1979)
bliss and suffering
Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.
Dylan Thomas
A few words of a kind
How to do the writing
Fiction takes forever. One slow word against another.
Tales are told of writers who spend a day to add a single word, as the subsequent day might just be spent removing it. Yes, this happens. Others write in concentrated bursts, and very little after; at least, until the next burst.
The most important writing lesson: patience. The second: learning to recognize what works best for what it is you think you want to do. How to do the writing you do, and do it best. I think my own work a combination of the day spent adding and removing, and the productive, compressed burst. The slow, repeated carve.
Rob Mclennan
Life is too short for long fiction
Excerpt From a Diary 45
Source: Excerpt From a Diary 45
Excerpts From a Diary 44
Source: Excerpts From a Diary 44
Excerpts From a Diary 43
Source: Excerpts From a Diary 43
Excerpts From a Diary 42
Source: Excerpts From a Diary 42
