You stole my story and something's got to be done about it.
Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose. With twenty-six shapes arranged in varying patterns, we can tell every story known to mankind, and make up all the new ones__ndeed, we can do so in most of the world__ known tongues. If you can give language to experiences previously starved for it, you can make the world a better place.
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Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose. With twenty-six shapes arranged in varying patterns, we can tell every story known to mankind, and make up all the new ones__ndeed, we can do so in most of the world__ known tongues. If you can give language to experiences previously starved for it, you can make the world a better place.
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I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too.
Writing to corroborate what you already think is the essence of bad writing.
All throughout our lives, we selectively draw on selected shavings of life events and reflect upon them through consciousness, creating an arranged catalogue of senses, faculties, and mental activities that compose our personal life story.
Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
I write about scoundrels; my specialty is generally scoundrels. If somebody's done a bad thing, I just talk about it. I don't prettify it or anything. My characters, a lot of them are disgusting _ what they've done in the past. Somebody described them once as "last-ditch attempts at justification." And sometimes that's what my characters or my personae are doing: they're saying, "Yes, I did this and that thing, and perhaps it was evil. It was bad _ maybe it wasn't even evil _ but this is why I did it. You don't know the circumstances surrounding it." And this is the telling; they're almost retelling what happened from their point of view .... I use "bad words" whenever I feel the need, you know, I just put 'em in there _ if it's true to my character. I always like to think that I'm doing things that are true to my charcter. And I hope that, when I'm dealing with violence, for example, that it's not gratuitous, that it's coming out of character that requires that .... I usually start with character, rather than a concept or an idea. If I do want to deal with an idea, I must create a character, in order to work from there, from that angle.