Entries from September 2010

Sep. 29, 2010

Bellow on Inspiration

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” — Saul Bellow (via)

Tags:   ·

Sep. 27, 2010

Giotto’s Red Circle

Pope Boniface VIII was looking for a new artist to work on the frescoes in St. Peter’s Basilica, so he sent a courtier out into the country to interview artists and collect samples of their work that he could judge. The courtier approached the painter Giotto and asked for a drawing to demonstrate his skill. [...]

Tags:   ·

Sep. 24, 2010

For Writers

A writer at work is about as isolated as it is possible to be. No matter if he is sitting in a crowded Starbucks, no matter how gregarious he may be at other times, when he is writing he is perfectly alone. I have always welcomed the solitude. Most writers do, I think, otherwise we [...]

Tags:  

Sep. 23, 2010

What “finished” means to a writer

“Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.” — Alain de Botton

Tags:   ·

Sep. 21, 2010

Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

“Chance favors the connected mind.”

Tags:   · ·

Sep. 19, 2010

The Wages of Worry

“It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.” — Alain de Botton

Tags:   ·

Sep. 18, 2010

What makes Emma Bovary so interesting?

Sometimes in reading at random, weird patterns emerge. The last couple of days I ran across these two quotes, both trashing sacred-cow novelists. In the first, from The Paris Review in 1963, Katherine Anne Porter explains why she detests F. Scott Fitzgerald. Not only didn’t I like [Fitzgerald's] writing, but I didn’t like the people he [...]

Tags:  

Sep. 17, 2010

Poem for the weekend: “Strawberries” by Edwin Morgan

There were never strawberries / like the ones we had / that sultry afternoon…

Tags:   ·

Sep. 16, 2010

It’s All Been Done

The pleasures and doubts of writing in a genre.

Tags:   · · ·

Sep. 13, 2010

An interview with Lee Child and Kate Miciak

A very interesting interview hosted by novelist Laurie R. King with Lee Child and Bantam-Dell editor Kate Miciak, who edits both of them. (Kate edits me, too.) I’m late stumbling across this — the interview was broadcast last October at Blog Talk Radio — but it is well worth a listen if you’re interested in [...]

Tags:   · · ·