[Writer Cate Kennedy] considers the internet’s constant flow of unprocessed information and chatter ”toxic to fiction”, which requires quiet, slow reflection by writers and readers. ”We’re decontextualising, pasting bits of other people’s work on our blogs and creating unoriginal mash-ups,” she said.
Kennedy limits herself to checking emails twice a day and saves up her internet research as if for an occasional library excursion.
Category Archives: Writing
Writing about the things that really matter
One of the places you can really see the influence of “Operating Instructions” is in the proliferation of mommy blogs. I wonder if you read any — or if you think, if you were a young and single mom now, you would be blogging?
I don’t think I would have ever blogged. I am not even sure how you find someone’s blog. What I loved were all those years of doing shaped, crafted essays about my life and spiritual or political pursuits — but those 1,200 or whatever words took a full week to get just right. They were the length and the topics I love to read. I always used to tell my writing students to write what they’d love to come upon — and I love deeply honest, authentic writing about the things that really matter in our lives. I asked Sam the other day if people could make money on Twitter or blogging, and he said, not really. Plus, my friend Mary saw a T-shirt at the airport that said, “No one reads your blog.”
What I think is great is everyone writing their truth, keeping a written video of their lives, their families’ lives — growing up, and seeking connection with others in this very jarring and disconnected world. But I don’t think I’m a blogging type — I’m-too much of a perfectionist. I keep trying to capture moments and passages just right, so other people might find a little light to see by in my work. And that takes forever.
—Anne Lamott
in an interview with Sarah Hepola
A certain kind of writing
I’ve actually been feeling kind of conflicted about the blog, because…I mean, I like it. I like having a place for readers to get together. I love the community that readers have formed there. But I am not making posts very frequently. I was when I first started. I might just have blog fatigue like everyone gets, but also I feel like it was kind of sapping my autobiographical juices, which I need to put in this other project. Blogging is wonderful, but it’s a certain kind of writing. It’s not seasoned. You haven’t sat with something and refined it over and over. It just comes out, and then it’s gone (laughs). So I’m not doing so much blogging lately, just kind of doing a minimal amount of posts to keep a connection going.
The blog was process, the book was conclusion
One smart friend who has read both [blog and book] said she thought the blog was process, the book was conclusion. The ideas in the book are presented in a more distilled, thoughtful way, and the book framework allows me to tell longer stories and explain more complicated ideas. I’m able to show how different ideas fit together, which can be tough to do in one blog post. The book goes deeper.
Sharing Stories
People I know who don’t read my blog often ask me what it’s about, and why do I blog. But since you’re here, you likely already have a good understanding of the answer to those two questions. What it really comes down to is that blogging allows me to observe the human experience — in ways that I will never experience personally. There is simply no way that I can experience everything in my life. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to soak it up and explore it a bit anyhow. And I think that’s why so many bloggers are avid blog readers. It’s all about sharing stories. Giving stories a voice.
Outward towards the world
First, what a personal essay is not: it’s not journalism. It can be about anything … but it is not written on assignment. It comes instead from the writer’s own fund of interests and obsessions, questions to be raised or answered, observations, fantasies, regrets, uncertainties, delight. It evolves from a desire to know or to understand, to make connections. It is often triggered by some sort of experience in the world. It will sometimes lead to research, always to reflection. Above all, it is engaged.
And it’s not a confessional piece. … [A] personal essay needn’t be autobiographical at all except as a kind of autobiography of mind. Memoir is okay, but the expectation is that the memoir is not just a record of dates and events; it’s more like a meditation on a time and place and what their particular conjunction reveals, in retrospect, about the world, human nature, the writer’s own emotional disposition. … So, the self, but the self isn’t all. … [T]he movement of the essay is not so much inward as outward towards the world. The personal is the conduit to something larger or more foreign.
AB Article
I was not intending on writing an Absolute Blank article this month, but somehow 😉 I ended up pulling together a last-minute substitute. Fortunately, my brilliant (((plan))) involved coming up with some questions and compiling the responses. Here ’tis: “What Do We Look For In Submissions? Q&A with the Toasted Cheese Editors.”
The world through books
I have always filtered the world through books, and I still do to a large extent. Writing is just an extension of that.
Real Life
[I]n real life, being an aspiring writer is very unsexy.
Obstacles to international comprehension
What are the consequences [of globalization] for literature? From the moment an author perceives his ultimate audience as international rather than national, the nature of his writing is bound to change. In particular one notes a tendency to remove obstacles to international comprehension. …
More importantly the language is kept simple. Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of the importance of avoiding word play and allusion to make things easy for the translator. Scandinavian writers I know tell me they avoid character names that would be difficult for an English reader.
The Remainder Table 