On the Difficulty of Editing Well
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
Blaise Pascal
A Toy and an Amusement
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
~Winston Churchill
Claire Messud on ambition
Here’s a good interview with Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children, on the Kenyon Review blog.
So is ambition ever justified? There’s always something insane about it, there’s something always unjustifiable about it. But what would ever get done without it?
Nanomo Writing Exercise:
Write a story that is propelled in part by a character’s blind ambition.
John Gardner on detail
“In addition to watching the rhythm of his scene–the tempo or pace–the writer pays close attention, in constructing the scene, to the relationship, in each of its elements, of emphasis and function. By emphasis we mean the amount of time spent on a particular detail; by function we mean the work done by the detail within the scene and the story as a whole.” John Gardner, The Art of Fiction