Writing

Nov. 5, 2012

Junot Diaz: You keep writing anyway

Junot Diaz: *In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.*

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Nov. 5, 2012

Ian McEwan on the ideal length of a story

Ian McEwan: *I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction.”

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Oct. 2, 2012

Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (1963)

Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (1963) (video)

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Sep. 21, 2012

Zadie Smith’s Ten Rules for Writers

When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else…

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Sep. 7, 2012

Jeffrey Eugenides: Not the audience, the reader

Jeffrey Eugenides: “I think about the reader. I care about the reader. Not audience. Not readership. Just the reader. That one person, alone in a room, whose time I’m asking for. I want my books to be worth the reader’s time, and that’s why I don’t publish the books I’ve written that don’t meet this criterion, and why I don’t publish the books I do until they’re ready.”

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Aug. 29, 2012

Picasso: I am always doing what I cannot do

Picasso: I am always doing what I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

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Aug. 23, 2012

Elmore Leonard on bad movies and good writing

Elmore Leonard interviewed. (video)

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Jun. 27, 2012

Aaron Sorkin: Now all I have to do…

Aaron Sorkin on the upcoming Steve Jobs bio pic: *I don’t know what the movie’s about yet…*

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Jun. 7, 2012

Bradbury: Action is hope

“Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad — you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.”

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May. 16, 2012

Ken Burns: On Story

Ken Burns: On Story (video)

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Jan. 27, 2012

Making Gatsby

Fitzgerald’s handwritten manuscript of “The Great Gatsby.”

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Jan. 24, 2012

Tweet of the Day

Alain de Botton: “Good work tends to happen only at the end of day: when the fear of accomplishing nothing finally exceeds fear of doing it badly.”

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Dec. 8, 2011

How to Start

*The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.* Alain de Botton

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Dec. 1, 2011

Just create to create

The Right Brain Terrain Manifesto: “You may not be a Picasso or Mozart but you don’t have to be. Just create to create. Create to remind yourself you’re still alive. Make stuff to inspire others to make something too. Create to learn a bit more about yourself.”

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Sep. 20, 2011

John le Carré: The final interview

John le Carré, age 79, in what he claims is the final interview he will grant (2010).

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Sep. 12, 2011

The novel-writing process in one chart

Novel-writing process flowchart by Maureen McHugh.

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Sep. 10, 2011

How to Tell a Story

Matt Stone and Trey Parker drop in on a writing class at NYU (video).

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Sep. 7, 2011

Grit

Jonah Lehrer on the causes of success.

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Jul. 21, 2011

Quote of the Day

Hemingway: “Summer is a discouraging time to work — you don’t feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.”

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Jul. 6, 2011

Every writer is a thief

Joseph Epstein: “Every writer is a thief, though some of us are more clever than others at disguising our robberies. The reason writers are such slow readers is that we are ceaselessly searching for things we can steal and then pass off as our own…”

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