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Tag Archives: on writing
The 5 Best Quotes Ever Uttered By Ernest J. Gaines
We realize the headline is a bit of hyperbole but in researching Mr. Gaines for this week's exploration of his life and works, we realize that he has a tremendous way with words. Not just on the page, but in interviews as well. English rolls off his tongue in a way that to the ear often sounds like poetry, and his fingers create rich worlds without burdening the reader with five-dollar words. We gathered some of his best quotes from interview past so you could see for yourself how he does it:
On writing for the reader:
I write as well as I can and I learned from reading people like Hemingway, and others, that writing less is better. If I can say something in five words instead of seven words, I’ll use five. Sometimes it’s a little difficult for some people to understand it if... Read More →
Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules For Writers (Take #7 To Heart!)
We enjoy a good list just as much as the next person, and even more so when it comes to advice for writers. We're an interesting bunch, full of quirks and idiosyncrasies, and doubts and fears and ambition. We devour information and try to spit out prose. So when we came across this bunch of tips from Zadie Smith, we decided that yes, we needed to share it with you.
From The Guardian:
1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3. Don't romanticise your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4. Avoid your... Read More →
On Writing: Nicole Krauss And The Magic Of Literature
It's always a question of whether the story will come when a writer sits down to begin a work and for Nicole Krauss, it's always a mystery. In an interview with Interview magazine, she talks about her strengths as a writer:
Part of the work of writing a novel is to uncover these symmetries or connections that make it whole, which might not reveal itself at first. I have a very strong sense of architecture in my novels. But, yes, at first it's sometimes like it's like building a doorknob before you have a door, and a door before you have a room.
When asked about her writing process for Great House, she admits that this is her favorite part of her job:
On different days I would work on different sections and sometimes I would get really absorbed into one voice and I would write... Read More →
VIDEO: How To Write Like Walter Mosley
In this series of videos from BigThink.com, 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Award winner Walter Mosley gives answers to all types of questions: What big ideas have you had lately? What's the biggest misconception about a writer's life? And perhaps a question every writer and aspiring writer wants to know: What is your writing routine? Get the answers to all these and more below:
Read More →
Interview With Kamila Shamsie On The Power Of Reading
In this brief interview, Kamila Shamsie, a 2010 Anisfield-Wolf award winner, talks about the joy of reading, the upside of ebooks, and whether she considers herself a political writer. A must-listen for anyone who is a fan of her work or a fan of literature in general.
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Junot Diaz On Why He Writes And The Power Of Perseverance
What makes a writer a writer? It's a simple question with many possible answers and if you ask 10 authors, it's almost guaranteed that you'll get 10 different answers. Junot Diaz answered the question as only he can:
My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool.
But they were cool, showed a lot of promise. Would also have been fine if I could have just jumped to something else. But I couldn't. All the other novels I tried sucked worse than the stalled one, and even more disturbing, I seemed to have lost the ability to write short stories. It was like I had... Read More →
