An eclection of insights into the nature of writing and being a writer.
Missing homework
Here Steinbeck suffers a bout of exam nerves before being bombarded with highly intellectual questions from his counterparts in the Soviet Union, particularly regarding 'American writing', which for some reason they expected him to know something about. As he says, if...
Four years old today!
Today is Shakespeare's birthday & ours! The WritingRedux literary ink-fest is 4 years old with 2000+ dazzling illustrated quotes, reviews and other bright writing delights. Sign up for regular mind-feast despatches to hone your wits and lift your...
My publisher, falsely so called…
Listening time: under 3 minutes.I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting to clear out his cellar of Thoreau's unsold books, which Thoreau had in any case had to pay for. So he gets them sent to his house, schleps them up several...
Focus your light
Wise guidance for writers. I like the way George Eliot calls herself to order and her self-reminder to focus, focus, focus resonates. A perennial weakness is being yanked in two directions - the desire to concentrate light on a particular web on the one hand, and on...
All good publishers have a department of exceptions.
Gabriel Zaid – So Many Books
Safe rendering
The Russian author Vasily Grossman here resists editorial efforts to render the first of his Stalingrad novels, For a Just...
Palladian persuasive powers
Let me remember this the next time I wonder what chance there is of persuading anyone to fund ambitious cultural...
A plunging-in approach to writing
Wonderful exuberance of spirit in this wielding of the pen, beginning with that zestful, zipping 'Hang it all!' and 'Here...
Key Penmanship Indicators (KPIs) – V
A writer occasionally knows their prose is straight, keen and true; often knows it isn't quite, but without being sure...
Forgetting and forgetfulness
I like this questioning of cause versus effect in the writing - and reading - of novels. Does writing and...
Manuscripts as moments in time
I have long felt this sense of time’s encapsulation in manuscripts, and I like this example of a manuscript being...
To see at a distance
Thoreau has many striking things to say about poets, and even if I can't seize on them as definitive or...
Stories as generosity
An expansive view of stories from Turkestan, as if they embody the sweeping spaces of the steppe, and the freedom...
A record of experiences and growth
Recently I've become curious about how people view journals, what they use them for, and have been experimenting with writing...
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