writing-craft

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Style and voice are different. Style is standard conventions of writing. Voice is the distinct way an individual puts words together. All good writers have a near-uniform understanding of style but a voice all their own.

Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

If there is method here, it is hard to discern it. Let it be repeated: the use of capitals is a matter not or rules but of taste; but consistency is at least not a mark of bad taste.

You cannot be a great writer in a shop where words are sold in tens and twenties.

This is the secret to mastering any discipline: as you conquer one, you'll find it easier to tackle another.

If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters.

Hamlet' dwarfs 'Hamilton' - it dwarfs pretty much everything - but there's a revealing similarity between them. Shakespeare's longest play leaves its audience in the dark about some basic and seemingly crucial facts. It's not as if the Bard forgot, in the course of all those words, to tell us whether Hamlet was crazy or only pretending: He wanted us to wonder. He forces us to work on a puzzle that has no definite answer. And this mysteriousness is one reason why we find the play irresistible. 'Hamilton' is riddled with question marks. The first act begins with a question, and so does the second. The entire relationship between Hamilton and Burr is based on a mutual and explicit lack of comprehension: 'I will never understand you,' says Hamilton, and Burr wonders, 'What it is like in his shoes?' Again and again, Lin distinguishes characters by what they wish they knew. 'What'd I miss?' asks Jefferson in the song that introduces him. 'Would that be enough?' asks Eliza in the song that defines her. 'Why do you write like you're running out of time?' asks everybody in a song that marvels at Hamilton's drive, and all but declares that there's no way to explain it. 'Hamilton', like 'Hamlet', gives an audience the chance to watch a bunch of conspicuously intelligent and well-spoken characters fill the stage with 'words, words, words,' only to discover, again and again, the limits to what they can comprehend.

Don__ write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn__ be changed.Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?Don__ erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.Play with syntax.Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better _ if you have to say it, you will.Read your poem aloud many times. If you don__ enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.If you ask a question, don__ answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time).Maximum sentence length: seventeen words.Minimum: One.Don__ be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don__ love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.

A really well-done first draft of a book bares your soul. The purpose of revision is so that everyone who reads the published version believes you were writing about theirs.

According to Wallace, the expectation that art amuses is a 'poisonous lesson for a would-be artist to grow up with,' since it places all of the power with the audience, sometimes breeding resentment on the part of the author. 'I can see it in myself and in other young writers,' he told McCaffery: 'this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.' Wallace expressed his 'hostility' by writing unwieldy sentences, refusing to fulfill readers' expectations, and 'bludgeoning the reader with data'--all strategies he used to wrestle back some of the power held by modern audiences.

You gotta dig through the shit to get to the gold.

Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chill of it: the story told for perversity's sake, and all the better for that; the image created because an artist gets tired of reasons sometimes, and wants to dredge up some picture he's been haunted by, and parade it like a new tattoo. I go with it, readily.

But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.