An eclection of insights into the nature of writing and being a writer.
Poetry as gleaning
A telling comment by Christopher Isherwood on W.H. Auden's approach to revising his poems. It makes one wonder how many scholars have wasted hours peering deeply into some poem of 'celebrated obscurity' which was never more than an accretion of lines that had passed...
Of abundant overflow
What causes creativity to spring forth? I like Seamus Heaney's idea that it is not so much reactive as a generous overflow from an abundant internal source.This then is truly creative writing. It does arise from the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, but the...
No post and plenty of censorship
We don't know how lucky we are, having access to many forms of communication, electronic or postal, and being free of censorship. Here Stefan Zweig describes the conditions in which he had to write The World of Yesterday, a moving, lucid account of his world and its...
Let the colour dry
An insight into technique by a superb poet, using a wonderful metaphor. Time fixes colours, in words as in paints, and you should let your work dry before you alter it. And decisions? Might the same principle apply?Poems, like water-colours, should be left to dry...
All good publishers have a department of exceptions.
Gabriel Zaid – So Many Books
Focus your light
Wise guidance for writers. I like the way George Eliot calls herself to order and her self-reminder to focus, focus,...
Heroic journals
All laud to Labaume, going to such heroic lengths to write his journal. I will have to introduce this makeshift...
Marketing opportunity missed?
Standing on a railway platform I noticed an advert plastered on the drinks dispenser, for Evian mineral water. Clearly, the...
The sonnet never written
This is one of the longest and most entertaining chapters in Machado de Assis' novel Don Casmurro, a fictional memoir...
Religion or weariness
I liked this sharp reminder that literature is always work-in-progress, particularly in translation. While I have used the term 'definitive'...
The richest of all soils
The use of 'rich soil' to represent fertile ground for writing isn't surprising but this reference to 'decayed literature' is. ...
Nonsense daubers
Folly, speaking from her light-hearted pulpit, lays into another bunch of self-serious fools, those who write books, or as she...
Key Penmanship Indicators (KPIs) – IV
That's it, isn't it, 'the authentic sunlight of life', when writing rings true like a fine china bowl resonating perfectly...
Of damp and prolixity
Orlando reveals his bias towards the 18th (or against the 19th) century by noting the turn of the century as...
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