Metaphysical Description, Or How Many Potatoes Make How Much Vodka?
If description is the art of distillation, what’s the ideal potato-to-vodka ratio? Sit down and stay awhile: things are about to get metaphysical.
Posts Tagged ‘writers on writing’
Serving the Story: An Interview with Richard Bausch
The prolific Richard Bausch on fear as fuel, naïvité as strength, and keeping the writing fresh year after year.
Get Writing: On Desire
Desire is the writer’s best friend. When you know what your main character wants, you have your entire story. When someone wants something–badly–he or she will get up off the couch and try to attain it. The object of desire might be a new winter coat (”The Overcoat” by Gogol), a boy (”City of Boys” [...]
From Story to Novel: An Interview with Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain made a lot of noise with his prize-winning collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. Turns out he can write a damn fine novel, too.
Get Writing: Be Authentic
Write what you know without simply writing what you know …
Write What You Know. I’ve never felt wholly comfortable with this phrase. I tell my students to abandon the literal idea of it on the first day of class. How bored and boring we’d all be if that were all any of us ever wrote. [...]
The Deep Eye: On the Embedded First Person
Michael Byers on how to succeed – and fail – in the first person.
Many Souths: An Interview with Wiley Cash
When Wiley Cash found himself homesick for the mountains of western North Carolina, he didn’t drive or fly home—he wrote his way back. In this interview, Cash discusses the importance of place in his debut novel, the legacy of Southern literature, and the influence of mentors on his work.
Messy Experiments, Elegant Solutions
Celeste Ng offers compelling proof that storytellers aren’t so different from scientists: both explore the same very large, very dark, very crowded room, poking and prodding and tirelessly asking, what if?
Surfers and Cowboys: An Interview with Robert Garner McBrearty
Beneath an unassuming demeanor, Pushcart Prize-winning Robert Garner McBrearty writes stories of the revolution. The former dishwasher on the mythologies of the American West, the bravery of small presses, Colonel William B. Travis, and why he feels solidarity with scrappy underlings.
“My novel is going nowhere”
You may have said those words once or twice yourself, perhaps? (If not, please leave this blog. Now.)
It may comfort you to know that you are not alone in that sentiment: even established writers think so, now and then—and have for decades, if not centuries. To prove it, Michael Hoffman has combed [...]
