novels

When you've got creative momentum, the last thing you want to do is stop. I'd write and write and wake up with my head slumped over and my fingers still on the keyboard and the last sentence trailing off like eeeeeejjjjjjjjjjjjj . . . Then I'd finally crawl to bed. Mornings were rough, but I got used to it. It was invigorating to write a couple thousand words while the rest of the world was asleep. More invigorating than rest.

There's a magic to letting a story and its people unfold with witchcraft and late nights and walks in the woods. You don't lead a story. You follow it.

I love the longueurs of a book even if they seem pointless because you can get a peek into the author__ mind, a glimpse of their creative soul.

Turn your thoughts to novel writing__arrative, let it be about what it will, is read, because the mind quietly acquiesces, and it requires no trouble to think about it. On your part it will demand much less care in the composition. Never mind improbabilities__ut together a sufficient number of facts__he more unlikely the better. If you are too idle to choose the trouble of inventing, collect eight or nine of the most popular works of that sort; take a piece of one, and a piece of another, and put them together, only a little altered, just to disguise them: never mind whether what the painters call keeping, can in this motley assemblage be attended to; nobody thinks about that: sprinkle the whole plentifully with horrors of some sort or other, to stimulate the languid attention, and you will have a certainty of a sale at least among the circulating libraries, which, after all, is the principal sale that can be expected; for who buy novels?__ho indeed buy books at all in these times?

Incidental, all of it, of course, but this was what this city bestowed that novels couldn't: not what you needed in order to live, but what made the living worth doing in the first place.

Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.

Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Nyawira asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriama Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.''I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Kamiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.''Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Nyawira pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Meena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Tharu. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!''I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Kamiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads _ Not that I read everything, but _''I am sure that those epics and Puranas, even the Gita, were all written by men,' Nyawira said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?

If the shining sun blinds the eye,it makes sense. But to be blinded by gold and silver!

Fiction in general holds little interest for me. Novels, in particular, arouse more suspicion than intrigue. It truly baffles me that any practitioner of make-believe should (especially in this day and age) feel the need to produce anything so gratuitous. The fact that certain examples of this fare can approach the length of your average dictionary seems inherently absurd.

Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.

Creativity is a commodity and derives its value only in how energy is spent.

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

All of fiction is truthful. What you create is your own truth and no one can take that away or change it.

Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of __laying_. A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which __eighborhoods_ have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of __eighbor childrens_ houses or play in __ackyards_. In the absence of sidewalks in newer __ated_ coummunities, children cannot __alk_ to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A __laydate_ is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you__e been awaiting.

Sentimentality was used because other political avenues were closed, and authors hoped that through it they could bring about a political change that would fulfill the egalitarian promises of the Revolution. Real political venues were unavailable, so fiction became a medium for authors to appeal to audiences for change.

Meredith immersed herself in the novels. For some reason, fiction hit on the meaning of life so much more concisely than real life itself did.

A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader.