Quotes & Notes: Got to Serve the Book
by Steven Wingate
”The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.” —Cyril Connolly
”The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.” —Cyril Connolly
Author Elizabeth Benedict, editor of the recent anthology Mentors, Muses, & Monsters, discusses her experience being forced to unplug: Finding this blank book already so full of hope and history — from Hemingway’s to my beloved sister-in-law’s — was a bit like encountering a bear in the woods: it was just the two of us, and it was up to me to save my skin. I couldn’t hide, couldn’t escape to the computer or connect anywhere but in its cream-colored pages. I began by rereading the manuscript pages from the novel — and I winced two dozen times. It was […]
“Whatever you do, stay in the room.” So advises Ron Carlson in his book on the craft of writing, appropriately titled Ron Carlson Writes a Story. He knows what world exists on the other side of the door: a world full of televised sports, dirty dishes, iced mochachinos. A world full of distraction from the task at hand. Writing, he argues, is about staying in the room, pushing beyond the point where your eyes glaze over and your fingers refuse to type. That’s where the magic lies.
“I’ve always felt personally and emotionally closer to the searchers, rather than to the finders…to those who don’t get answers, as opposed to those who do. For me, the experience of epiclitus is closely related to the experience of the uncanny, but also to the experience of complex and problematic emotions, like yearning, and awe, and psychic unease, which are of particular interest to me. That precipice of endless uncertainty, of the impenetrable—those are the moments that I’ve always loved in literature, as well as the moments that have haunted me in life.”
The classic The Things They Carried is being re-released in honor of its 20th anniversary, so unsurprisingly, Tim O’Brien keeps popping up in my radar lately. Besides being a powerful writer, O’Brien is also a great teacher, and in his recent interviews he offers useful thoughts for writers of all levels. In this interview for Beyond the Margins (with Grub Street program manager Sonya Larson), O’Brien discusses the writing of The Things They Carried, how being a father changed his writing, and recent literary works by soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan: I have read a number of books and […]
“When I was asked whether I’d be interested in taking part in a panel on turning the MFA thesis into a first book, I said yes right away, but I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. In fact, I felt like a bit of a fraud because my journey from the thesis to the published book was so long and roundabout. But I’ve convinced myself that this is part of what makes my story worth telling here, because long and roundabout might be just as common as quick and straightforward, and my particular kind of roundabout experience makes me feel emboldened to give certain bits of advice.”
Charles Johnson taught creative writing at the University of Washington from 1976 to 2009. He is the author of numerous books, including the National Book Award-winning Middle Passage. Zachary Watterson, one of Johnson’s former students, talks with his mentor about the literary friendships that have influenced the author’s more than forty-year writing career.
If you’re reading the FWR blog furtively, hunched in your cubicle over your TPS reports, this post is for you. You are not alone: almost all writers need a day job to support their art. Lapham’s Quarterly reveals the day jobs of some famous writers, such as Charlotte Bronte, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner in trading-card format. Or quiz your friends: Which novelist helped create the modern London police force? Which novelist made only $1838 per year in today’s dollars? If these writers could turn out masterpieces like As I Lay Dying and In the Penal Colony and the Chronicles […]
Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, the Guardian recently asked several contemporary authors for their own rules of writing. Writers such as Margaret Atwood, Annie Proulx, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith, and many others answered the call ((Here’s Part One; and here’s Part Two). You may have noticed that at Fiction Writers Review, we take our rules with a pinch of skepticism. (Steven Wingate’s Quotes & Notes series has investigated some of the “rules” embodied in writing-related quotes.) But writing is a hard job, and we all long for the magic formula that will help us get […]
Through prose that is concise, confident, and empathetic, Malie Meloy evokes what David Foster Wallace called the “plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions” of life, and treats them with “reverence and conviction.” Joshua Bodwell talked with Meloy about her newest collection, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, the craft of writing short fiction, and the art of finding the right voice for a story.
