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writing: page 2******
The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible. Profound, bottomless self-doubt: it has no value, what's the point? In a way, that takes up as much time as anything else. Jonathan Safran Foer - nerve.com Screening Room interview about his novel Everything Is Illuminated
*related page:**self-esteem / self concept~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~
Alice Sebold -- books:
The Lovely Bones: A Novel******
Lucky // "A stunningly crafted and unsparing account of the authors rape as a college freshman and what it took to win her case in court." [Kirkus Review]
One of my influences is the painter Helen Frankenthaler, who was condemmed for a while as painting things for the sake of beauty and she was painting in the land of big muscular boy painters who got both critical raves and big gallery sales. It made me think that in beauty -- true beauty -- there is revolution. It may be quiet and it carries no guns, but it is the revolution I cherish. To transform experience and thought into language and narrative -- that is beautiful even if that beauty is in brokeness. Faith.. begins when you go out in the world and begin to cull people and things that will support your intuitive sense of what is right for your work.
What is very painful is to think of how many writers are lost because they didn't break through the snobbish oppressive voices of the shoulds that now seem even more dominant (what with more books on HOW one should write than ever). I think of Tillie Olsen's Silences in this way. There are people out there right now being silenced by the voices of the Shoulds and it breaks my heart to think of that.
The other word above my computer is "Invincible." I feel true beauty, in whatever form and no matter how fleeting (say in a dance performance), is this thing, is "Invincible," and that gives me great faith.
Alice Sebold******from interview by Bold Type randomhouse.com/boldtype]
~ ~ ~
She wrote the first 15 pages of The Lovely Bones in a single, unexpected rush that left her shaken. "It was one of those white-heat moments," Sebold remembers. But the struggle wasn't over. Two years into the novel she felt she had to take a break to write Lucky, a searingly unsentimental account of her rape.
"I felt like I had a story of my own that was bearing down on me in such a way that it would infuse and therefore ruin Susie's story," says Sebold, who is 39 and lives near Los Angeles with her husband Glen David Gold, also a writer. "I wanted Susie's story to be a novel. It is: The Lovely Bones is free of any veiled autobiographical traces, and that's both a personal and an artistic triumph.
[from article: Murdered, She Wrote by Lev Grossman, Time, July 01, 2002]
~ ~ ~ ~
 On September 11th [2001], Steven Soderbergh's words, "Without art this world would be unlivable," took on an entirely new significance.
At first I began to write in my journal -- my thoughts, fears, anxieties -- finding words to express each emotion I felt. It was through this process that I began to understand the true purpose of writing. It is above all else to develop a form of communion with our inner life. A way in which we know ourselves. What we think. What we feel. |
And by extension, it is how we communicate these thoughts and feelings to others.
I began to see that there is
more of an imperative for writing, indeed, for all the arts, than ever
before. So, I have moved from the "so what" stance to an "as if" perspective.
I want to live as if -- even with the horror we have known and continue
to be threatened with -- writing is worthwhile because it gives us to ourselves,
and then to each other.***Cathleen
Rountree***
from Postscript for The Writer's Mentor, barnesandnoble.com **photo
from cathleenrountree.com *book:**Cathleen Rountree. The Writer's Mentor: A Guide to Putting Passion on Paper |
~ ~ ~ ~
| Talent renders
the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which
you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed
or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening
(or reading, or watching,) every outing is a bravura performance, because
you as the creator is happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.
That goes for reading and writing as well as for playing a musical instrument, hitting a baseball, or running the four-forty. The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate -- four to six hours a day, every day -- will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them. ... Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. *****Stephen King*******book: **On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft |
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~ ~ ~ ~
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A painter, dancer and journalist...
Lisa Teasley says that her goal as a fiction writer is to "drop readers
dead center" into the minds and hearts of people on the verge of breakdowns
or breakthroughs. But the extreme situations she depicts aren't meant as
furtive glimpses of some dark sociological underworld. While her characters
may live far from the middle-class suburbs of much current American fiction,
she maintains they're not as alien as some may believe.
"That daily drama that we hear about or read about, even if we don't experience it ourselves, it is a part of life," she says. "And I just happen to be attracted to those kind of situations, just in wondering what is the human spirit in that kind of dire circumstance, or just at the point of epiphany." LA Times, February 24 2002 / photo from lisateasley.com collection of short stories: Glow in the Dark by Lisa Teasley |
~ ~ ~ ~
Some people fear seeing or feeling anything about which there is no general agreement.
For others, it is thrilling to be aware of innuendo, shading, complexity.For those who do not wish to step away from consensus, the creative is useless at best; at worst,
it is dangerous. But for those who are intrigued by the multiplicity of reality and the unique
possibilities of their own vision, the creative is the path they must pursue.Deena Metzger - from her book: Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds
~ ~ ~ ~
 A writer's inner life matters: it is hard to imagine that anything matters more.
Nor is this inner life something that anyone else is privy to, unless and until the writer wants to share it. It is a private, secret hotbed of activity, an unruly, unquiet, unholy cauldron bubbling with the best and the worst thoughts a person can think. ... |
The writer is something of a shape-changer
and trickster, someone a little more treacherous, eccentric, and unpredictable
than she at first appears, because she is continually buffeted and transformed
by an inner life invisible from the outside. She may speak to her mate
in complete sentences about what her day was like, but inside another life
is being lived, one full of beauties and monstrosities, upheavals and transgressions.
Even if the writer safely contains that inner reality -- sublimates her urges, controls her thoughts, manages her monsters -- it nevertheless remains alive inside of her, always ready to produce the next book or sorrow, the next meaning spark or meaning crisis. from Eric Maisel, Ph.D. Living the Writer's Life |
~ ~ ~ ~
I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done. Steven Wright
~ ~ ~ ~
.. .. I spent a year revising it and all they'd say was we like it better, but still don't know. I thought hope was pretty much gone. Then came word they were considering it for the debut fiction issue if I wanted to revise it again. |
I
didn't think it could be made any better and still be my story. The big
issue was cutting. I finally cut as much as I could, about a fourth of
the story, and actually liked it.
When I finally turned it in, I had been working on it for four days without sleep. My agent said that, yes, the New Yorker was going to take it. But I didn't believe it until I had a contract in my hand. .... I don't consider myself an underdog as much as an apprentice. I still look at writers I admire and think, "Man, I wish I could do that." I have not achieved what I want, but maybe I will someday. ZZ Packer... [Seattle Post-Intelligencer seattlepi.com, March 29, 2003] A graduate
of Yale, writer ZZ Packer has held Wallace Stegner
|
~ ~ ~ ~
| A
good novel begins by stirring a question in the reader's mind, the story
question... In a romance novel, the story question is usually something
like: Will the heroine overcome her problems and find true love and partnership?
The story question must remain the focus throughout the story, and should
never be completely answered until the end of the novel. ...
The best love stories are fantasies in which the deep emotional values of love, family, and partnership in marriage emerge victorious over lesser values. Even when the ending is unhappy, the value of love triumphs, as in Bridges Of Madison County and Casablanca. Hero and heroine are deeply altered by their love. They emerge from their struggles more emotionally whole than they began. //excerpt from book: Writing Romance by Vanessa Grant - posted on her site vgrant.com |
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~ ~ ~ ~
| A writer is
a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers
know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them
with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they
strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning
that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls
of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.
Ursula K. Le Guin - from her site: ursulakleguin.com
|
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~ ~ ~ ~"Writing is a series of passions and pains. It is about highs and lows.
You can never come up with anything half as good as a grocery list if you're
writing mechanically. So, when you write - explode - fly apart - disintegrate!
Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite."Ray Bradbury Zen in the Art of Writing
~ ~ ~ ~
 |
Emily Dickinson
is a unique figure in American literature, a great poet and a great woman.
Her philosophy always washes over like a balm for the soul. It's spiritually
good for all of us to hear her words.
Julie Harris [LA Times 9.3.00] After playing, or more correctly transforming myself into, Emily Dickinson for twenty-five years, I am still awed by her. She was a free soul and an eccentric. For her, words were life; sacred beings, phosphorescence. To find that light within -- that's the genius of poetry. Julie Harris from book: Wise Women: A Celebration of Their Strength, Spirit, and Grace by Joyce Tenneson // photo from Joyce Tenneson site related book: The Poems of Emily Dickinson |
~ ~ ~ ~
| If "read
a lot, write a lot" is the Great Commandment -- and I assure you that it
is -- how much writing constitutes a lot? That varies, of course, from
writer to writer. One of my favorite stories on the subject -- probably
more myth than truth -- concerns James Joyce. According to the story,
a friend came to visit him one day and found the great man sprawled across
his writing desk in a posture of utter despair.
"James,
what's wrong?" the friend asked. "Is it the work?"
"How many
words did you get today?" the friend pursued.
> from On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King / photo from Work in Progress 2street.com/joyce |
 |
~ ~ ~ ~
| A
Different Kind of Intimacy : The Collected Writings of Karen Finley
by Karen Finley, Annie Leibovitz - a collection of Karen Finley's texts, performances, short stories, essays, op-eds, art and photographs |
 |
| Aroused:
A Collection of Erotic Writing by Karen Finley
"..an anthology of erotica, sexual culture, passionate texts, sensual encounters and essays on gender bending, neurotic erotic lust, school girl antics, coming of age, and first times, ranging from personal gratification to denying gratification, control, submission, possession, and jealousy, with race, age, and economics thrown in for a more heightened emotional response. Ö [Amazon.com review] |
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~ ~ ~ ~
*********************
NY: At certain points we found ourselves thinking, What do we know about a 53-year-old man
and his issues? Then we decided that he's a person. Not a man. He's a person. And women
raise men. They live their lives among men. They're married to men. They spend their lives
observing men and anticipating men's needs.DP: We did go through a process of thinking about it and questioning what we were doing.
Then we started to laugh because we were thinking over all of these many years that film
and television have been produced, it's more likely that men have been writing stories about
women, and they don't ever seem to hesitate. It never seems to be a problem for men.
Then we both thought, What are we worried about? It's like that Gloria Steinem quote:
"I've never seen a man agonizing over how to combine marriage and a career."Nicole Yorkin and Dawn Prestwich, creators and executive producers of CBS drama series
The Education of Max Bickford, about a widowed college professor [played by Richard Dreyfuss].[from article Women on Top by Marsha Scarbrough, October 2001 issue of "Written By"]
~ ~ ~ ~
Beverly Donofrio |
Drew Barrymore |
Born into a working-class Italian-American family in Wallingford, Conn., Donofrio rebelled early ...
indulging in drugs, promiscuous and aimless, she became pregnant before graduating from high school,
and had a short-lived marriage.She was seventeen when her son Jason was born. They spent eight years on welfare. Later, as a single mother,
she studied at Wesleyan University ... and went on to earn an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia.[edited from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal reviews of her book "Riding in Cars with Boys.."]
The toughest part of turning the book into a film, says Donofrio, "was making my character
sympathetic. Basically, I was a wild, neglectful, ambitious, narcissistic young mother -- and
given the way that people overmother these days, it's risky to portray somebody like that.
The challenge was to make me lovable." [from film site][the film stars Drew Barrymore as Donofrio]
books by Beverly Donofrio:
Riding in Cars with Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good
Looking for Mary (Or, the Blessed Mother and Me)
~ ~ ~ ~
 interviewer: I find that a big appeal of your stories is that the reader can easily identify with them. What makes you want to tell stories like these? What's the appeal for you? Well, they're not all told specifically with the intention of making something people can identify with because then they'll learn about their lives. It's nothing that direct. |
But
for me to be able to write stories, I need to understand characters pretty
clearly. A lot of times they feel very real to me. It's like they're people
that I know but haven't seen for a while. ...
Let me just clarify a bit more. Identification is not the primary goal there. The primary goal is to investigate human behavior; the way things work between people and to talk about those things in a way that looks deeper than the surface. Simply out of curiosity and sympathy for the human race, not for any particular goal or with a lesson in mind, or anything like that." writer/comic artist Jessica Abel [grayhavenmagazine.com interview] photo from her site: Artbabe |
~ ~ ~ ~
Cynthia Ozick, that miracle word-spinner, speaks of envy in a generous interview published in
Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series. "Youth," she says, "is for running
around in the great world, not for sitting in a hollow cell, turning into an unnatural writing-beast.There one sits, reading and writing, month after month, year after year. There one sits, envying
other young writers who have achieved a grain more than oneself. Without the rush and brush
and crush of the world, one becomes hollowed out. The cavity fills with envy. A wasting disease
that takes years and years to recover from."What is this thing that has us chewing at our own selves, grating ourselves against our own
sharp sieve? It is the act of stepping back. It is the act of separating, and judging. It takes only
one because the one becomes two.The self separates from the self. It points a finger and declares, "You are good" or "You are bad."
Either one, it doesn't matter. The first statement usually flips over to become the second. And
vice versa. Either way, the separated self is not doing the writing. Envious, the self is thinking
about the writing, thinking about the self, rocking in its dark corner.from Writing Past Dark : Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life by Bonnie Friedman
~ ~ ~ ~
| My
proposal for 'Simple Abundance' was turned down so many times - 30 in all
- that to soften the blow, my agent would break the news to me a few rejections
at a time. I cried myself to sleep more nights than anybody can imagine.
But the next morning, I'd say, 'Let's give it one more shot.' During this
time, I never stopped writing the book; even though I didn't have a publisher,
I acted as if I did."
Sarah Ban Breathnach
"Simple Abundance" was number one on the New York Times best-seller list in 1996, and has sold 5 million copies [O, Sept. 2000]
|
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~ ~ ~ ~
**************
----Susan
Sontag [photo by Annie
Leibowitz]
The writer's first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth ... and refuse
to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation. Literature is the house of nuance
and contrariness against the voices of simplification.The job of the writer is to make it harder to believe the mental despoilers.
The job of the writer is to make us see the world as it is, full of many different
claims and parts and experiences.It is the job of the writer to depict the realities: the foul realities, the realities of rapture.
It is the essence of the wisdom furnished by literature (the plurality of literary achievement)
to help us to understand that, whatever is happening, something else is always going on. ///Another problem with opinions. They are agencies of self-immobilization.
What writers do should free us up, shake us up. Open avenues of compassion
and new interests. Remind us that we might, just might, aspire to become different,
and better, than we are. Remind us that we can change.As Cardinal Newman said, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change,
and to be perfect is to have changed often."And what do I mean by the word "perfection"? That I shall not try to explain but only say,
Perfection makes me laugh. Not cynically, I hasten to add. With joy.from "The Conscience of Words" by Susan Sontag [remarks upon accepting the Jerusalem Prize] [LA Times, June 10, 2001]
~ ~ ~ ~
 "He is a controversial person, and he never pulls his punches," said his former editor Diana Athill. ... In his books, Athill said, "he struggles for a God's-eye view. It's a bit arrogant, and no one is ever pleased, but that's what a good writer does." ... "He's an absolute perfectionist. He didn't even need a copy editor. He had clear ideas about where he wanted a hyphen and where he wanted a comma. All we had to do is read to see if the typesetter got it right." .... |
Naipaul has always portrayed
himself as "a stateless observer," [Guardian newspaper literary critic
Maya Jaggi] said.
He sees himself as an objective truth teller who is devoid of any political or ideological agenda -- a transcendent condition many writers consider to be impossible. In an interview with Jaggi published last month, he called Britain [where he lives] "someone else's landscape" and said: "I'm my own writer. My material means I'm entirely separate." from "V.S. Naipaul Receives Nobel for Literature" LA Times, Oct 12, 2001
|
~ ~ ~ ~
************************Gloria Naylor
"Writers are voracious readers. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words,
a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Everything was
fair game: from Louisa May Alcott to my older cousin's True Romance magazines, from
Lewis Carroll to the backs of cereal boxes.All of this fed me, but it took certain books to make me grow. These books helped to shape me
as a writer, and I hope as I go on, a better writer. I don't want to write without a sense of drama,
without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me."Gloria Naylor [O, The Oprah Magazine, Aug. 2001]
books by Gloria Naylor: Mama Day The Women of Brewster Place
World Orders Old and New by Noam Chomsky
"For anyone who has felt something was missing from the reportage she reads or sees on the evening news,
this is the book to read. As a writer, I need to understand the world in which I move.
It may never enter my fiction, but it's certainly the springboard from which I create."
Gloria Naylor [O, The Oprah Magazine, Aug. 2001]
~ ~ ~ ~
On Visualizationby Marisa D'Vari, author of Script Magic'In many American families, writing is perceived as an "artistic" profession and children
are encouraged to take up a trade or profession they can "fall back on." The very word "writer"
conjures up images of failure, and at a vulnerable point in their career, writers hear a replay
of old messages and visualize futility and failure. How can one change images of failure to success?' ...Through a process called Creative Visualization. ...
Creative Visualization is used by successful people in all walks of life. It's a way of changing
negative images to the positive. This is because the subconscious mind does not have reasoning
ability. What it "sees" it manifests in reality. Once you learn the art of changing a negative image
to a positive, you'll be well on your way to achieving success as a writer.Marisa D'Vari is the author of the Script Magic: Subconscious Techniques to Conquer Writer's Block
her site: http://www.deg.com/
~ ~ ~ ~
"The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.
And the joy of writing, when you're writing from your subconscious, is beautiful --
it's thrilling. When you're editing, which is your conscious mind, it's like torture.
And I've just kind of decided that anytime it's torture, I want to stop. I'll just put it
down and wait until it becomes not torture." Steve Martin [NY Times, 8.8.99]
~ ~ ~ ~
"I think it's still difficult for women to be taken very seriously as writers -- that there's some resistance -- even though things have changed wonderfully for the better. It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer." [Oates] says that Blonde was an experimental novel and almost nobody talks about that, but had she been a male writer, it would be accepted as such. "If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation -- but, then I couldn't be myself either."
Joyce Carol Oates [writersdigest.com interview]---book: Joyce Carol Oates. Blonde
~ ~ ~ ~******* *******
Pushing 50, Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), an English professor
who was once the wonder boy and darling of the literati, is unable
to finish his new novel, which has grown to humongous proportions.
Consumed with fear that it will fail to live up to his masterpiece,
published seven years earlier, he toys with various endings while
the new book sits, waiting to be rescued.
[from Variety review by Emanuel Levy, Feb 21, 2000]
--dvd:----Wonder Boys----book:----Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
~ ~ ~ ~
To say that a writer is basically introspective or that she requires solitude in order to think her thoughts hardly catches the flavor of her riotous inner life. What defines the writer more than anything else is her rich, roiling, sometimes light but often dark inner busyness, a busyness made up of daydreams, worries, thought fragments, and elaborated thoughts, an inner reality filled with the music she has heard and still dwells upon, the sights she has seen and still dwells upon, the sentences that form and dissolve and form again, finally becoming the opening paragraph of a book she had no idea she was intending to write.
from Eric Maisel, Ph.D. Living the Writer's Life
~ ~ ~ ~
[Do you have a routine or ritual you follow when you sit down to write?] I read poetry before I write, and I read it aloud because the poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I read it aloud, that music is in my ear. Then when I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write (up) to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.
****Janet Fitch - from Time Warner Bookmark interview**
The world is made up of stories, not atoms. Muriel Rukeyser ... [quoted in National Association of Women Writers newsletter naww.org]
*related books: A Muriel Rukeyser Reader***The Voice of the Poet : Five American Women
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more:*-writing: page 1---writing: page 3**--writing : page 4......--writing : teen/young adult........**writing: resources : books/sites.
---related pages:----nurturing mental health : writing.*----writing: teen/young adult--*---screenwriting / playwriting
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*********sections :---Women & Talent ------Teen / Young Adult talent
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