I do worry a little that the modern age has taken the failure stage out of the creative process. Now if you can’t get your manuscript published, it’s because the publishers are cowards, can’t see your genius, and you can self-publish it (and then send out slightly crazed emails to critics). There is a lack of humility, a failure to recognize that getting knocked on your ass is actually good for you.
Category Archives: Quotes
A Necessary Thing
I often need to remind myself that I need to hear failure out, because by failing at doing an easy thing, a groupthink thing, a thing one has been taught to do for one’s career, one might be encouraged to make or do or be something more original and true. Because failing as an artist is a necessary thing, a thing I wish I could more easily accept.
Tweaking it a bit and trying again
I don’t think [querying every single agent in the publishing industry at the same time is] very good strategy on the part of the author. If you didn’t get it quite right the first time and you’ve sent it to everyone in publishing, you just lost your chance at tweaking it a bit and trying again. If you rush the submission process you lose the ability to evaluate and adjust as you go. … Going at a steady pace can be frustrating and tedious, but it gives you time to research agents and personalize, to keep working on new material, and to give yourself time to look at your query and opening with fresh eyes.
[S… this is the quote I was talking about. Kind of apropos in more ways than one this week!]
The synopsis is the story
If you can’t write a concise synopsis, your novel’s not ready. Once upon a time I wrote a novel. I tried writing a synopsis to send along with my query letters, but I had a difficult time with it and I never finished. At first, I thought: Who cares? What’s so important about a synopsis anyway? It’s the story that counts. So I queried only agents who didn’t require a synopsis. Know what happened? Nothing. Form rejections. It seems so obvious to me now, but what I didn’t understand back then was that the synopsis is the story. If you are having trouble writing a synopsis, step back and take another look at the story you’re trying to tell. Are there pieces missing? Did you start it in the right place? Is your arc arched enough? Is your ending satisfying? When the story is ready, writing the synopsis should be easy-breezy-lemon-peezy.
If it can be taught at all
Craft refers to the mechanics of fiction: plot, characterization, dialogue, pacing, flow, scene-crafting, dramatic structure, point-of-view, etc. I think craft is pretty easy to teach and it’s easy to learn. It’s technique, the foundation upon which writers use their artistic skill to build their story. Knowing the mechanics of craft enables you to use it to create the effect you want.
Story refers to the page-turning factor: how compelling is your story, how unique or original, does it connect with the reader, is there that certain spark that makes it jump off the page? Is it sufficiently suspenseful or romantic (as appropriate)? Does it open with a scene that intrigues and makes the reader want to know more? Story comes from the imagination of the writer and is much more difficult to teach than craft (if it can be taught at all).
Voice is the expression of you on the page—your originality and the courage to express it. Voice is what you develop when you practice what we talked about yesterday—writing what you know. It’s the unfettered, non-derivative, unique conglomeration of your thoughts, feelings, passions, dreams, beliefs, fears and attitudes, coming through in every word you write.
Perfectly Reasonable
The headline of the obituary in the New York Times labelled Salinger a “literary recluse”, which is true enough (though the same paper recently reported that he was a perfectly charming fixture around town, “who arrived early to church suppers, nodded hello while buying a newspaper at the general store and wrote a thank-you note to the fire department after it extinguished a blaze and helped save his papers and writings”). Yet many of his wishes were perfectly reasonable. It is normal not to want journalists appearing on your doorstep, or family members or ex-lovers to publish memoirs about you. However unlikely it is that he ever achieved peace or normalcy, he had every right to seek both.
We don’t think of women at all
Here’s the deal: men, without thinking, will almost without fail select men. And women, without thinking, will too often select men. It’s a known fact that among children, girls will happily read stories with male protagonists, but boys refuse to read stories with female protagonists.
…
Our cultural prejudices are so deeply engrained that we aren’t even aware of them: arguably, it’s not that we think men are better, it’s that we don’t think of women at all. The absence of women from lists and prizes leads, then, to the future absence of women from lists and prizes. Now, lists and prizes mean nothing, of course; except that they inform curious readers about who and what to read.
A wrestling match between hopelessness and something else
[M]y internal life as a writer has been a constant battle with the small, whispering voice (well, sometimes it shouts) that tells me I can’t do it. This time, the voice taunts me, you will fall flat on your face. Every single piece of writing I have ever completed — whether a novel, a memoir, an essay, short story or review — has begun as a wrestling match between hopelessness and something else, some other quality that all writers, if they are to keep going, must possess.
Time for Books
Just about everyone I know complains about the same thing when they’re being honest—including, maybe especially, people whose business is reading and writing. They mourn the loss of books and the loss of time for books. It’s no less true of me, which is why I’m trying to place a few limits on the flood of information that I allow into my head.
…
There’s no way for readers to be online, surfing, e-mailing, posting, tweeting, reading tweets, and soon enough doing the thing that will come after Twitter, without paying a high price in available time, attention span, reading comprehension, and experience of the immediately surrounding world. The Internet and the devices it’s spawned are systematically changing our intellectual activities with breathtaking speed, and more profoundly than over the past seven centuries combined. It shouldn’t be an act of heresy to ask about the trade-offs that come with this revolution. In fact, I’d think asking such questions would be an important part of the job of a media critic.
A Luxury
Somewhere along the way, though, [reading] has become a luxury. Something I promise myself, if I just – finish – those – fifteen – tasks – first. … I have somehow lost the ability to say ‘yes this is something I need to do’ and so I barely get in a guilty twenty minutes or so to read a chapter before going to do something else.
Books I really really want to read, books I was so excited about that I pre-ordered them to get them early, are lying around unread, or partially read, stacking up against the walls and the chairs. Luxury, my brain tells me. Not now, my brain tells me.
I’m beginning to suspect that my brain and I are not on the same page.
The Remainder Table 