The process of self-invention is never-ending; writer, like children, are always growing into their gifts. (Susan Larson in a "Times-Picayune" book review.
There would seem to be four stages in the composition of a story. First comes the germ of the story, then a period of more or less conscious meditation, then the first draft, and finally the revision, which may be simply __encil work_ as John O__ara calls it _ that is, minor changes in wording _ or may lead to writing several drafts and what amounts to a new work.
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There would seem to be four stages in the composition of a story. First comes the germ of the story, then a period of more or less conscious meditation, then the first draft, and finally the revision, which may be simply __encil work_ as John O__ara calls it _ that is, minor changes in wording _ or may lead to writing several drafts and what amounts to a new work.
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They were learning that New York had another life, too _ subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city _ a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more.
Write the ending first and then you'll know before the opening sentence that it's going to be a good book.
...it's not the medium that's the message - it's consciousness - the wonder of being able to wonder ...
Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.
Don't think too much. There'll be time to think later. Analysis won't help. You're chiseling now. You're passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There's something there. It isn't your business yet to know whether it's going to be prize-worthy someday, or whether it will gather dust in a drawer. Now you've carved the tree. You've chiseled the marbled. You've begun.