Quick tightener: There is, there was, there are, it is…
Delete them.
We’re talking here about style and efficiency: getting to the point and getting the reader’s attention. — David Galef
(Source: writermag.com)
tagged with writing
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If writing is not a tearing of the self toward the other within a confession of infinite separation… then it destroys itself.
- Jacques Derrida
(Source: elifbatuman.net)
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If he literally pissed off the Devil in the process, he’d be standing on top of the Devil and urinating off him while simultaneously falling in love with a vampire whose soul he just replaced.
- Fragment of a query critique over at BookEnds, “Workshop Wednesday.”
(Source: bookendslitagency.blogspot.com)
Doors to a writer’s acuity. By sarcoptiform.
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I was writing, yeah, but nothing spectacular. I had some unicorn notebook, and all of my stories were the same. And it’s funny because I actually think it’s the same plot I still use. Like, ‘Once upon a time a bunch of magical forest creatures lived in peace!’ ‘And then,’ new paragraph, ‘there was a flood!’ [Laughs.] It’s really all the same.
- Karen Russell when asked if she’d been writing since elementary school.
Writers: If you’re going to procrastinate, do it right.
From Gretchen Rubin’s, “Problem With Procrastination? Try This: Do Nothing.”
[Raymond] Chandler set aside at least four hours each day for writing; he didn’t force himself to write, but he didn’t let himself do anything else. He wouldn’t let himself read, write letters, write checks — nothing. He summed up: “Two very simple rules: a.) You don’t have to write. b.) You can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.”
If I could tear this digital list into shreds I would. This is lazy writing.
Ever seen someone who feels dejected? A kid perhaps who was declined a date to the dance? THIS is what you write down, not the word. The word is a shortcut to telling. Showing what the character looks like or how he acts is in my mind better writing.
Don’t make it easy on yourself. Don’t subscribe to these lists. Your writing will appreciate it.
(Source: artandalcohol)
Dickens may have been the first texter in the world.
In several places in the manuscript we can see instances of early “text speak” - shortening full words to letters and numbers. As one of several examples on this page, when Dickens imitates Pip’s own writing, he uses “2 u” instead of “to you.”
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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 can/not write
I love to read my writing
especially when I recognize how awful it is, and how delightful it is
to deletestrikethroughwaft it into literary ether.
I hate to read my writing
especially when it’s tight, flows, and makes me savor that sensual feeling
anesthetizing
because I know
I am fooling my/self.
