Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
The literary critic, James Wood, strikes a fine balance in his book, How Fiction Works. Although it could, the book never strays into the purely theoretical (unlike I. A. Richards’ Principles of Literary Criticism which I looked at last week) or the mechanical (unlike Jack Hodgins’ A Passion For Narrative which serves as a manual for writers).
E-ink is a lie. It tries to persuade us that writing is black. While I don’t doubt that some of it is black, the very best writing appears in brown ink. That’s because the very best writing is smeared on the page in shit.
After reading Making An Elephant, I’m of the opinion that Graham Swift isn’t really interested in writing; he’s interested in people and writing is the pretext he uses to satisfy that interest.
There’s a post on Writer’s Digest titled “8 Basic Writing Blunders” directed at writers of fiction. Pretty standard stuff: avoid clichés of one sort or another; don’t tell the reader what s/he’s supposed to think; don’t be all preachy; don’t use more than one coincidence to drive the plot. But notice who wrote the article: Jerry B. Jenkins.
If a god were to blog, I think the result would look a lot like mine, i.e. not very good, at least not very good when measured by worldly standards where traffic is king.
I’ve finished writing a novel (tentatively titled Clouds On Wall) and expect to complete the editing/polishing/paring by the end of the month. The looming question is: what next?
Ostensibly, this poem is a response to the news that marine biologist, Nicholas Hughes, son of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, committed suicide on March 16th, 2009.
Something I try to ignore is business writing. However, I stumbled upon the American Express Open Forum with the tagline: “A wealth of resources for savvy business owners.” In particular, I stumbled upon a short piece by Guy Kawasaki called “Literature and Narrative Management.”
In the November issue of The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan offers us “Why I Blog”, an extended meditation upon this still-emerging form. Although Sullivan cut his teeth in the world of print, he knows what he’s talking about. He made the leap in 2000 and is the personality behind The Daily Dish.
The April issue of The Walrus ships with a promotional DVD from HarperCollins — an interview with Barbara Gowdy about her new novel, Helpless. In the interview we learn the secret of how an author finds inspiration for writing fiction.
About 12 years ago, someone suggested that I keep a journal. Since then, and in widely different contexts, several others have made the same recommendation. At first, I didn’t know where to begin. A blank page can be daunting. Should I fill it—like a daytimer—with the trivial details of my day-to-day living? Or should I gush with the intimate cares of my heart?
Looking back on some of my earliest rants, I see that I was personal, and reading them now makes me wince (a little like watching an interview of Anne Heche shortly after she had broken up with Ellen Degeneres).
This is a question that has plagued me for some time now—at least since lunch time. After all, this is the man who distinguished himself in 1991 by becoming the only Canadian ever to be arrested for selling his writing.