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Quotation of the Day: Rebecca McClanahan

by Erika Dreifus on
5

Because it can’t be said too often or too strongly:

“When we write nonfiction we relinquish our right to change what happened to suit our imagined version. The creative part of nonfiction lies elsewhere, in the way our imaginative eye views the world–selecting details, combining and recombining information, and reshaping experience….Artful arrangement of information was one of the cornerstones of the ‘new journalism’ of Wolfe and Capote, and remains an important component of creative nonfiction. Facts, information and real-life events do not have to be presented dryly, like encyclopedia entries. They can emerge wrapped in the skin of story, or shaped like prayers, lists, recipes, letters, confessionals, dialogues or diaries. When the eye of imagination is engaged, it illuminates the artful possibilities hidden within actual events. From the hard rock of fact, stone by stone the writer builds a castle.”

Source: Rebecca McClanahan, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively (Writer’s Digest Books, 1999)

Quotation of the Week: Thomas E. Kennedy

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

The thing is, anything can happen or not happen in this game. The lesson I learned somewhere along the way is that if you just keep doing what you do, at some point somebody will notice and say, Hey look at that guy, he just keeps doing that thing he does, let’s go see what it is he’s doing. And then maybe something happens. But whether it does or doesn’t, a writer finds the true joy of his art in the creation of it. That is important to be aware of. If a writer is not conscious of that fact, he or she would do well to expand their consciousness, because as much as one might hope for great rewards, in truth it is the moment of creation that is the greatest of all. No monetary award or laurel can equal that, really, which is sometimes hard to remember.

Source: Thomas E. Kennedy, interviewed by Joyce J. Townsend in The Writer’s Chronicle 42.5 (March-April 2010).

Quotation(s) of the Week: Roddy Doyle

by Erika Dreifus on
2

I’ve always advised my writing friends and students to title their works-in-progress. So I was happy to see this advice for fiction-writing:

4. Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

8. Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

Source: Roddy Doyle, quoted in Ten Rules for Writing Fiction (which you’ve probably seen mentioned elsewhere online since posting last month).

Frankly, I also find this advice extremely reassuring because I have just retitled my story collection.

Quotation of the Week: Marilynne Robinson

by Erika Dreifus on
2

“Home borrows characters from Gilead but centers on Ames’s friend Reverend Robert Boughton and his troubled son Jack. Robinson returned to the same territory as Gilead because, she said, ‘after I write a novel or a story, I miss the characters–I feel sort of bereaved.’” (emphasis added)

Source: Marilynne Robinson, interviewed by Sarah Fay, The Paris Review, fall 2008.

I don’t have multiple novels to my credit, but I have to admit that I, too, have enjoyed reviving characters from one story to appear in another.

What about you?