I make things up and write them down. I hope one day someone will read them and believe me, and then print out a copy for someone else to read. Until then, would you believe me if I told you
We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple.
- David Foster Wallace, from “A Conversation with David Foster Wallace,” by Larry McCaffery.
“I’m always keeping random notes on scraps of paper,” he replies. “I always carry a pencil and a notebook. Coming on the train today I had an idea for a story I’m writing and jotted it down – on just a little scrap of paper. Then I clip these together. I’ll look at them in, say, three weeks’ time, and see what I’ve got. You know,” he adds defiantly, “I’ve never made an outline for any novel that I’ve written. Never.”
“It’s my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I’ve written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don’t know.”
- Don DeLillo in an interview with Robert McCrum of The Guardian.
The spur was a financial crisis. My car broke down, and I couldn’t afford to get it fixed. And another journalist at the newspaper had written a thriller and the advance he got from the publisher was £200, which was pretty much exactly the amount of money I needed to get my car fixed. I did not figure that out until life began to show me I was a so-so newspaper reporter, and as a novelist I might have something special.
- Ken Follett on what compelled him to write his first novel. See NYTimes article.
Scott Turow Offers Novel Writing Advice: “Persistence Is Critical”
Big Think posed the question “How do you deal with bad reviews?” to Yann Martel.
Visit Big Think… there are some interesting interviews with other writers and the like.
Steve Wasserman of Kneerim & Williams Literary Agency on the Qualities of a Good Literary Agent.
Not sure what Jason’s looking at (around 03:21) but I think they should reposition the cue card.
I like this guy.
Continues:
Gordon Parks: 100 Years
International Center of Photography (ICP)
1133 Avenue of the Americas, NYC @ 43rd St.
To commemorate...
A depressed copywriter
dogspeed
Château Lafite Rothschild
Oliver works it on Tumblr, Beckett theme by Jonathan Beckett
