-- Edward Albee in The Paris Review:

I find that when my plays are going well, they seem to resemble pieces
of music.

In a radio interview, Jonathan Sheffer (sp?)

recalls how Leonard Bernstein pointed out to a
class that the “Flower Aria” in Act 2 of Carmen
doesn’t repeat a single phrase throughout;
Bernstein described it therefore as “an
unfolding of unrehearsed passion.”
=
First thought best thought.
Jack Kerouac
=
have to not play what’s in my ears, if there’s something in my ears. I have to
find a way for my hands to start the concert without me.
Pianist Keith Jarrett

Dreams may also have supplied inspiration. When asked how he came up with
some of his ideas, McKillop is reputed to have said, “Well, you just eat a big
mess of fatback and go to bed and go to sleep and dream how to do it.”
(Jack L. Lindsay, Edgar Alexander McKillop [a N.Carolina wood carver
ca. 1930’s])
=

Only paradise or the sea could make me give up music.

Music is everything.
God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.

-- E.M. Cioran (Tears & Saints)

=
Calisthenics:
LEFT hand drawing followed by listening to music
followed by playing music and making up songs as you go
along –

1
=

as for publishing he advised me

to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence

that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read

I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure

you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write
W.S. Merwin –“Berryman”

=
Write as if all too soon you’ll be dead.
=

==
Nietzsche ("Of Reading and Writing"):

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with
blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.

It is not an easy thing to understand unfamiliar blood: I hate the

reading idler.

2
He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not
want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

=====
His Book, as indeed most good Books are, has been
written, in many senses, with his heart’s blood.
It is his whole history, this Book.
Thomas Carlyle on Dante [“On Great Men”]
= = = =

From Pablo Neruda's speech at the Nobel Banquet at

the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1971
(Translation):

I render my thanks and return to my work, to the

blank page which every day awaits us poets so that
we shall fill it with our blood and our darkness, for
with blood and darkness poetry is written, poetry
should be written.

====

The best American novelists have themselves been liberal in this

sense, courting isolation and risking incoherence in the hope of
making something new.

--Frederick Crews
== = = =

Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass:

This is what you shall do: Love the

earth and sun and the animals, despise
riches, give alms to every one that
asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy,

3
 devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the
people, take off your hat to nothing
known or unknown or to any man or number
of men, go freely with powerful
uneducated persons and with the young
and with the mothers of families, read
these leaves in the open air every
season of every year of your life, re-
examine all you have been told at school
or church or in any book, dismiss
whatever insults your own soul, and your
very flesh shall be a great poem and
have the richest fluency not only in its
words but in the silent lines of its
lips and face and between the lashes of
your eyes and in every motion and joint
of your body. . . .

=x=x=x=

When besieged by doubt or depression, take a

shower and change your clothes.
-- Donald Justice

In exile, the road home lies through

language, through dreams. So I wrote
stories.
-- Mircea Eliade
=x=x=

4
They look at my paintings and say, “My four-
year-old could have done that!”
And I say, “Yes. But could you?”
-- Sam Messer
==

In genius we perceive our own rejected

thoughts, returning to us with a kind of
alienated majesty.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

===

Basho said: avoid adjectives of scale, you

will love the world more and desire it less.

Suppose, before they said silver or

moonlight or wet grass, each poet had to
agree to be responsible for the innocence of
all the suffering on earth.

-- Robert Haas (Human

Wishes)

===
The other night I had a dream that I was
sitting on the sidewalk on Moody Street,
Pawtucketville, Lowell, Mass., with a pencil
and paper in my hand saying to myself
"Describe the wrinkly tar of this sidewalk,
also the iron pickets of Textile Institute,
of the doorway where Lousy and you and
G.J.'s always sittin and don’t stop to think
of words when you do stop, just stop to
think of the picture better -- and let your
mind off yourself in this work."

5
 Jack Kerouac (Dr. Sax)

and don’t stop to think of words when you do

stop, just stop to think of the picture
better
-----

The first and most obvious characteristic of

fiction is that it deals with reality
through what can be seen, heard, smelt,
tasted, and touched.
-- Flannery O'Connor
(Mystery and Manners)

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by

the power of the written word to make you
hear, to make you feel -- it is, before all,
to make you see. That -- and no more, and
it is everything.
-- Joseph Conrad (Intro to The Nigger of
the Narcissus)

The four elements are all empty in their ultimate nature;

Where could the Buddha’s abode be? --
But lo!
The truth is unfolding itself right before your eye.
This is all there is to it –
And indeed nothing more!
-- DT Suzuki on Zen

I know a good many fiction writers who

paint, not because they're any good at

6
 painting, but because it helps their
writing. It forces them to look at things.
Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and
Manners)

That which is before you is it.

Begin to reason about it and you at once fall into
error.
Huang Po

Harold Evans on Winston Churchill:

He knew people would not march behind a subordinate clause.
("If the Germans land on the beaches, we shall fight. . .")
[Churchill's speech: "We shall fight on the beaches. . . we shall fight
in the fields and in the streets. . . we shall never surrender."]

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever.

Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again.
Then hit it a third time a tremendous whack.
Winston Churchill

"In Kharkov I have a friend, a man of letters. I'll go up to him and say:
'Come, brother, put aside those abominable subjects you write about,
the loves of women and the beauties of nature, and show us the two-
legged vermin. There's a theme for you. . . .'"
(-- the character Pavel Ivanich in Anton Chekhov's, story "Gusev")

===

I will never scream I'M A GENIUS! at you again.

(-- One of a list of several promises to his wife, hand-lettered and

ornately framed, hanging on the wall of Tom Johnston (an
architect)
==

7
 Ben Ratliff on John Coltrane:
His Stockholm solos are long and searching, making surging
blues figures out of split-tones, turning what were once harmonic
convolutions into a sensuous new way of phrase-smearing. It
sounded, absolutely, like a new way of speaking an established
language. (Not long before this, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter
reported, Coltrane had mentioned -- apparently in earnest -- that
he wanted to learn how to speak English backward.)
==

The poor writer is dishonest without knowing it, and the fairly good
one can be dishonest because he doesn't know what to be honest about.
-- Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"
==

My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent,

inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom
from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take.
-- Chekhov (in a letter)

Chekhov, in a letter to his brother Alexander, set down the principles

he felt make a good story: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a
political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful
descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and
originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion."

. . . I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love,

marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.
-- Chekhov (in a letter)
==
According to Baudelaire ["E.A. Poe, His Life and Work"], Poe in The
Domain of Arnheim "declares that the four essential conditions for
happiness are: life in the open air, the love of a woman, the
indifference to any feeling of ambition, and the creation of a new type
of beauty."
==
From the journals of Soren Kierkegaard:

8
I bow unconditionally to no one regarding punctuation.

My whole makeup as a dialectician with an unusual sense of the

rhetorical, all the silent intercourse I constantly have with my thoughts,
my practice in reading aloud: all of this can't help but make me pre-
eminent in this regard.

I always imagine a reader reading aloud.

I repudiate all reviews. To me a reviewer is just as loathsome as a

streetwalking assistant barber, who comes running with the shaving
water which is used for all customers and fumbles about my face with
his clammy fingers.
-- Soren Kierkegaard journal entry 43IVA167 (8/4/43)
===

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing

clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.
-- Christopher Morley

I was led astray, because of unconsciously successful work, into

conceiving similar ones consciously and deliberately: this was a
mistake that I was to make again and again, until I understood it and
was able to avoid it.
-- Paul Klee (Journals)

Having the critics praise you is like having the

hangman say you have a pretty neck.
-- Eli Wallach

The important thing is that you make sure that neither the favorable nor
the unfavorable critics move into your head and take part in the
composition of your next work.
-- Thornton Wilder (Paris Review interview)

He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame.

9
 -- Proverbs 9:7

What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the

audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing
onstage, or pointless gunfire. . .
-- Tennessee Williams (PR interview)
=
I'll tell you about a dream I had recently. When I was a schoolboy in
Bucharest, my father used to come into my room in the evening and
check my homework. He would open my drawers and find nothing but
bits of poetry, drawings, and papers. He would get very angry and say
that I was a lazybones, a good-for-nothing. In my dream, he comes
into my room and says, "I hear you have done things in the world, you
have written books. Show me what you have done." And I open my
drawers and find only singed papers, dust, and ashes. He gets very
angry and I try to appease him, saying, "You are right, Daddy, I've
done nothing, nothing."
-- Eugene Ionesco (PR Int.)
=
Arthur Miller in The Paris Review:
What Chekhov was doing was eliminating the histrionics of his actors
by incorporating them in the writing: the internal life was what he was
writing about.

[A play should deal in] the kind of communication that a child

demands.
- Arthur Miller

==
--Neil Simon in The Paris Review:

The “well-made play” – a play that tells you what the problem is, then
shows you how it affects everybody, then resolves it.

10
When I was writing three-act plays, a producer told me the curtain
should always come down on the beginning of the fourth act. A play
should never really come to an end.
==
-- Edward Albee in The Paris Review:
I find that when my plays are going well, they seem to resemble pieces
of music.

After a certain point, I make experiments to see how well I know the
characters. I’ll improvise and try them out in a situation that I’m fairly
sure won’t be in the play. And if they behave quite naturally, in this
improvisatory situation, and create their own dialogue, and behave
according to what I consider to be their own natures, then I suppose I
have the play far enough along to sit down and write it.

==

E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with

Being Born):

Write books only if you are going to say in them

the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

Only what you hide is profound, is true.

Whence the power of base feelings.

In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me;

in a work of criticism, only the quotations.

No one approaches the condition of a sage if he has not had the

good luck to be forgotten in his lifetime.

A book is a postponed suicide.

====
=x=x=

11
We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our
doubt is our passion. Our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of
art.
--Henry James

===
=
Eliot’s review of Joyce’s Ulysses:

“Instead of narrative method, we may now use

mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a
step toward making the modern world possible for
art… And only those who have won their own
discipline in secret and without aid… can be of
any use in furthering this advance.”
(-1923 or 24, some time after the publication of
“The Wasteland”)
= = =

On the wall of the john in the Starseeds Café,

Austin, TX:

I’m a manta ray in

The sea
A poet
In the city

[in another hand:] a dork

in the bathroom

=
Same bathroom wall, an example of implied
narrative:

NEVER

12
Get a tattoo
By Mondo Medrano

==

…Poet… Prophet… The one we may call a revealer of

what we are to do, the other of what we are to
love.

We are all poets when we read a poem well.

Thomas Carlyle, On Great Men

He is world-great not because he is world-wide

but because he is world-deep.
- Carlyle on Dante, ibid.

=
The man who goes farthest, it has been said, is
the man who does not know where he is going.

Sinclair’s commentary
On Purgatorio Canto IV

=
[After the Armory show] students of the Chicago
Art Institute burned Brancusi and Matisse in
effigy.
--commentary for “The Rise of Modernism” show,
Austin TX 2004.

-
Some ideas require a graphic language if they are
not to be violated.

Marcel Duchamps of his “Glass”.

13
 = = =
Proust was a student of philosopher Henri
Bergson. Among Bergson’s chief tenets:
Experience should be conceived as duration, or
lived time, rather than as the abstraction we
measure with calendars and clocks.
Only intuition (not intellect) is capable of
perceiving the nature of ever-transient reality
[what might therefore be called “the transient”
or “what-is-passing”].
=
Henri Bergson: “The novelist might describe his
[the character’s] traits of character again and
again, he could have his hero speak and act as
often as he desired; yet all this would not
counterbalance the simple and undivided feeling
that I would experience, were I in this person’s
company, but for an instant.”
(The Introduction to a New Philosophy)

In God’s eyes the characters we create must look

like monstrous artifices – foul taxidermy – put
together from my ideas or the memories or
impression of different people, real people whom
He loves, and then shot with the feebly
grotesquely animating dregs of my own life-power…

=
In a radio interview, Jonathan Sheffer (sp?)
recalls how Leonard Bernstein pointed out to a
class that the “Flower Aria” in Act 2 of Carmen
doesn’t repeat a single phrase throughout;
Bernstein described it therefore as “an
unfolding of unrehearsed passion.”

= = =

14
Every man wants to experience certain perilous
situations, to confront exceptional ordeals, to
make his way into the Other World – and he
experiences this, on the level of his imaginative
life, by hearing or reading fairy tales.

--Mircea Eliade [in either Birth and Rebirth

or Myth and Reality], quoted in Betelheim’s
The Uses of Enchantment
=
= = =

. . . little pictures in which an originality of

execution dominates content.
- Checkhov (“A Boring Story”)

= = =

Simplicity is not an end in art, but we usually

arrive at simplicity as we approach the true
sense of things.
– Constantin Brancusi (sculptor)

= = = =

In his next class, watercolor painting, he felt

unusually calm and insightful. “Like this, like
this,” he said, guiding their hands.
“Delicately. Like a breath of air on the paper.
Just a touch. Like so. See?” he’d say and felt
on the edge of discovery himself. “Suggestion is
what it’s all about,” he said, holding lightly to
Sue Colvin’s fingers as he guided her brush.
“You’ve got to work with your mistakes until they
look intended. Understand?”

15
 -- Raymond Carver (“Fever”)
= = =

Writers as diverse as George Moore and Vladimir

Nabokov have argued that translations should
sound like translations.
James E Irby, intro to Borges’s
Labyrinths

As for the adjective: when in doubt, strike it

out.
Mark Twain (Pudd’nhead Wilson)
=

Now I held in my hands a vast methodical fragment

of an unknown planet’s entire history, with its
architecture and its playing cards, with the
dread of its mythologies and the murmur of its
languages, with its emperors and its seas, with
its minerals and its birds and its fish, with its
algebra and its fire, with its theological and
metaphysical controversy. And all of it
articulated, coherent, with no visible doctrinal
intent or tone of parody.

Borges: “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”

= = = =

. . . Follain’s concern is finally with the

mystery of the present – the mystery which gives
the recalled concrete details their form, at
once luminous and removed, when they are seen at
last in their places, as they seem to be in the

16
best of his poems. This is their value “in
themselves.” At the same time it is what gives
them the authority of parts of a rite, of an
unchanging ceremony heralding some inexorable
splendor, over a ground of silence. And for
Follain it is a fulfillment not only of a need
for ceremony but of a fondness for the
ceremonious, in which each detail, seen as
itself, is an evocation of the processions of an
immeasurable continuum.
-- W.S. Merwin’s intro to Transparence of the
World, poems by Jean Follain

= = = =

No other living writer has yielded himself so

completely and recklessly as has Isaac
Bashevis Singer to the claims of the human
imagination.
Singer writes in Yiddish, a language that no
amount of energy or affections seems likely
to save from extinction. He writes about a
world that is gone, destroyed with a
brutality beyond historical comparison. . .
He seems to take for granted his role as a
traditional storyteller speaking to an
audience attuned to his every hint and
nuance, an audience that values storytelling
both in its own right an as a binding
communal action – but also, as it happens, an
audience that keeps fading week by week,
shrinking day by day. And he does all this
without a sigh or apology. . . here is a man
living in New York City, a sophisticated and

17
 clever writer, who composes stories about
Frampol, Bilgoray, Kreshev as if they were
still there. . . the Hasidim still dancing,
the rabbis still pondering, the children
still studying, the poor still hungering, as
if it had not all ended in ashes and death.

Irving Howe, intro to The Stories of I.B.

Singer
= = = =

From Isaac Bashevis Singer's speech at the Nobel

Banquet, December 10, 1978:

People ask me often, 'Why do you write in a dying

language?' And I want to explain it in a few words.

Firstly, I like to write ghost stories and nothing fits a

ghost better than a dying language. The deader the
language the more alive is the ghost. Ghosts love
Yiddish and as far as I know, they all speak it.

Secondly, not only do I believe in ghosts, but also in

resurrection. I am sure that millions of Yiddish
speaking corpses will rise from their graves one day
and their first question will be: "Is there any new
Yiddish book to read?" For them Yiddish will not be
dead. . .

Ladies and Gentlemen: There are five hundred

reasons why I began to write for children, but to
save time I will mention only ten of them. Number 1)
Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a
hoot about the critics. Number 2) Children don't read

18
to find their identity. Number 3) They don't read to
free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for
rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. Number 4) They
have no use for psychology. Number 5) They detest
sociology. Number 6) They don't try to understand
Kafka or Finnegans Wake. Number 7) They still
believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches,
goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such
obsolete stuff. Number 8) They love interesting
stories, not commentary, guides, or footnotes.
Number 9) When a book is boring, they yawn
openly, without any shame or fear of authority.
Number 10) They don't expect their beloved writer to
redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know
that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such
childish illusions.

= = = =
=
Machado himself was living then in a shabby
lodging on a street called Calle de los
Desamparados – Street of Abandoned Children. He
couldn’t have had an address more characteristic
of him. A lonely widower, in his forties I
suppose, he gave the impression of being helpless
in life’s contests and struggles, a man without
defenses. There was no trace of worldliness
about him. Long ago he had accepted the pain and
ignominy of being what he was, a poet, a man who
had given up all hope of reward to live for the
delicately imagined mood, the counterpoint of
words, the accurately recording ear.
John Dos Passos (1957) describing Antonio
Machado ca. 1920’s

19
= = =

Man possesses four things

That are no good at sea:
Anchor, rudder, oars,
And the fear of going down.
-- Attributed to Antonio Machado by
Marvin Bell
=
= = = =

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of

consciousness that created them.
Albert Einstein
===

Once upon a time Antimachus was reading to a selected

company that lengthy poem of his and before he finished
everybody left except Plato. “I shall proceed
nevertheless,” he said; “to me Plato is worth a hundred
thousand.” He was right, of course: a difficult and
involved poem cannot be expected to make a wide appeal;
but an oration which is to be delivered to the public must
merit the applause of the public.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero Brutus. On the
Nature of the Gods. On Divination. On Duties. Tr. Hubert
M. Poteat U of Chicago Press p 125
=
====

From Saul Bellow's speech at the Nobel Banquet,

December 10, 1976:

20
I loved books and I wrote some. For some reason
they were taken seriously. I am glad of that, of
course. No one can bear to be ignored.
===

Ernest Hemingway’s letter accepting the Nobel Prize,

1954:

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for

writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if
they improve his writing. He grows in public stature
as he sheds his loneliness and often his work
deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is
a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the
lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new

beginning where he tries again for something that is
beyond attainment. He should always try for
something that has never been done or that others
have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great
luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it

were only necessary to write in another way what
has been well written. It is because we have had
such great writers in the past that a writer is driven
far out past where he can go, out to where no one
can help him.

====

21
=
Mortals, because they are mortal, fear the very name of
death; and those who have never loved or been loved, or
have been abandoned and betrayed or have vainly
pursued a being inaccessible to them without as much as a
look for the creature that pursued them and which they
did not love - all these are astonished and scandalized
when a work of fiction describes the loneliness in the very
heart of love.
-- Francois Mauriac, Nobel acceptance speech, 1952

= = = =

Paul Klee, “Memories of Childhood 1880-1895”:

Evil spirits that I had drawn (three to four

years) suddenly acquired real presence. I ran
to my mother for protection and complained to
her that little devils had peeked in through
the window (four years).

= = = =

August Wilson (PR Interview):

I have quotes, no more than two or three, that I

use to keep me focused and inspired. For my new
play, King Hedley II, I had a quote by Frank
Gehry on his plans for the Corcoran Gallery
addition: “I hope to take it to the moon.” And
a quote attributed to Charlie Parker: “Don’t be
afraid. Just play the music.” And a quote from
the Bhagavad-Gita: “You have the right to the
work but not the reward.”

22
Writing, ideally, is recognizing your bad
writing.

I don’t write for a production. I write for the

page, just as I would with a poem. A play exists
on the page even if no one ever reads it aloud.
. . . depending on the readers’ imagination they
may get more by reading the play than by seeing a
weak production.

= = = =

And a title of a Charles Mingus composition:

“Don’t be afraid, the clown’s afraid too”

= = =

“A first-rate play exists completely on the page

and is never improved by production.”

-- attributed to Edward Albee by

George Plimpton in PR Interview w/
August Wilson

= = =
To write the best story you can, take out all the
good lines.

- attributed to Ernest Hemingway by David

Mamet, (PR Interview)

= = = ==

=x=x=

23
unattributed:

Don't be stopped by obstacles you haven't

reached yet. If the way is barred somewhere
ahead, don't stop; proceed steadily forward.
When you get where it was, the obstacle may
have already disappeared.

It's easier to get forgiveness than

permission.

Success waits on the other side of failure.

You have to come in second and third many

times in order to come in first just once.

The less I discuss a work-in-progress, the

better it progresses.

Eventually I stopped grieving over what

wasn't published. And finally I'm very glad
it wasn't.

Success is remembered and failure is

forgotten.
The year Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs, who
held the record for strikeouts?

(Answer: Babe Ruth.)

24
I watch the dog with his chew-toy, and I think
he’s probably experiencing pretty much what I go
through at my desk writing books -- that he
pursues the same kind of solitary fascination,
experiences the same urgency, the same
frustration and triumph, the same self-
satisfaction and the same abasement. And my
novel is no greater an accomplishment than his
chewed-up toy pheasant. But also no less.

When you write something powerful, don't

distrust it simply because it was easy or
seems obvious. Maybe a lot of people could
have thought of it. But not many could have
granted themselves the authority to claim
it.

=
Having had the experience of seeing myself
misrepresented in print, and having had the
insight that it’s not myself, after all, being
represented – just somebody’s idea of me -- I
take a new view of the people who feel violated
when I steal their lives to make fiction. Aren’t
they like primitives who think their souls will
be stolen by a photographer’s camera? I can
respect their pain and fear their wrath, but I
understand it’s all baseless.
=

To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his right and left
hands. He uses both.
Saint Catherine of Sienna

25
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to
begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the
way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished
business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then
life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these
obstacles were my life.
Alfred D. Souza

You come to see . . . that suffering is required; and you no

more want to avoid it than you want to avoid putting your
next foot on the ground when you are walking. In the spiritual
path, joy and suffering follow one another like two feet, and
you come to a point of not minding which "foot" is on the
ground. You realize, on the contrary, that it is extremely
uncomfortable hopping all the time on the joy foot.
John G. Bennett

One is always seeking the touchstone that will dissolve one's

deficiencies as a person and as a craftsman. And one is
always bumping up against the fact that there is none except
hard work, concentration, and continued application.
Paul William Gallico

Q: We write essays and stories all the time in school. It

doesn't seem like a very difficult thing to do. Is it?
A: Not at all. All you need is a perfect ear, absolute pitch, the
devotion to your work that a priest of God has for his, the
guts of a burglar, no conscience except to writing, and you're
in. It's easy. Never give it a thought.
Ernest Hemingway
=

It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your
headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
E. L. Doctorow
=tents]

26
It is not hard work which is dreary; it is superficial work.
Edith Hamilton
=
Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman
who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.
E. M. Cioran
=
It is not possible to make discoveries under the pressure to please, to gain
audiences, and to make money. It is necessary to close off the impulse to
“make it” in order to open oneself.
Joseph Chaikin The Presence of the Actor (“Notes to Actors –
1965”)
=
I have no taste for either poverty or honest
labor, so writing is the only recourse left for
me.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance

of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
Hunter S. Thompson
=
A writer is a person for whom writing is more
difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann

What am I in the eyes of most people? A good-

for-nothing, an eccentric and disagreeable man,
somebody who has no position in society and never
will have. Very well, even if that were true, I
should want to show by my work what there is in
the heart of such an eccentric man, of such a
nobody.
Vincent van Gogh

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art,

is gratitude.

27
 Friedrich Nietzche

There is a microscopically thin line between

being brilliantly creative and acting like the
most gigantic idiot on earth.
Cynthia Heimel

The antidote to envy is one’s own work. Not the

thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But
the doing of it. . . only the work itself. It
drives the spooks away.
Bonita Freedman

It could be that there’s only one word and it’s

all we need. It’s here in this pencil. Every
pencil in the world is like this.
W.S. Merwin

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

Wallace Stevens

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we
are the hero of our own story.
Mary McCarthy
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fernando Pessoa (A Factless Autobirography):

I write my literature as I write my ledger entries – carefully and indifferently.

-
Does dreaming of princesses serve a better purpose than dreaming of the front
door to the office?
-
Perhaps my destiny is to remain forever a bookkeeper, with poetry or literature
as a butterfly that alights on my head, making me look ridiculous to the extent
it looks beautiful.
-

28
Not pleasure, not glory, not power. . . Freedom, only freedom.
-
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I’m trying again. A man has to begin over and over – to try to think and feel
only in a very limited field, the house on the street, the man at the corner
drugstore.
Sherwood Anderson, from a letter, quoted by Raymond Carver (epigraph
for “Harley’s Swans”)

But still this feeling of shame and loss.

Raymond Carver (“Harley’s Swans”)

=
First I wrote mainly to be loved.
Lately I’ve written mainly to have you envy my gift.

If they told me I was going to die, the feeling wouldn’t be, “Oh, no, I’ve got so
much left to say!” The feeling would be, “Oh, no! -- so much of what I’ve said
is false.”

=
The world is very dusty, uncle. Let us work.
Donald Justice, “There is a gold light in certain paintings”
=
When I first heard Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” in a recording by Ricki Lee Jones,
it arrived in me as a finished work – it was done, there was nothing I could do
to change it – but it defeated all my expectations, it was a little frustrating, and
I listened to it many times anyway, at first, just trying to get it to sound
different. That’s the first stage when something new comes at me. The final
stage is surrendering, admitting that I can’t change it and can’t ignore it, and
instead letting it change me.
=
Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as
they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal at table, just having a

29
meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are
being smashed up.
--Chekhov [quoted by R Brustein, intro to The Major Plays)
[And yet I misread this at first glance to say “. . . but at the same time their
happiness is being created, and their lives are being smashed up.”]
=

If the desire to write

Is not accompanied by actual writing,
Then the desire is not to write.
Hugh Prather (Notes to Myself)

=
I wonder if the neighbors can hear me crying. I wonder if they know how
happy I am. It’s hard to write. It’s desperately difficult, it’s paddling a canoe
across the river at the brink of Niagara Falls. The coldly steaming thunder of
death, the great tide, and your small arms, and still you have to remember how
to spell “Niagara.” Niagara of tears. Niagara of infinitesimal beautiful gifts.
=
=
If you think you are capable of living without writing, do not write.
-- attributed to Rilke by Garcia Marquez in Living to Tell the Tale.
=
. . . the single greatest drawing ever made. Look at the speed, the way he
wields that reed pen, drawing very fast, with gestures that are masterly, not
virtuoso, not calling attention to themselves but rather to the very tender
subject.
-- David Hockney (in a catalog for his show)
on Rembrandt’s sketch “A Child Being
Taught to Walk”
=
Van Gogh said, after seeing Rembrandt’s “Jewish Bride”:
“I would give ten years of my life to sit in front of this
painting for another fortnight, with nothing but a dry crust
of bread to eat.”
=

30
Rodin, through incessant work, was always in touch with the unconscious
sources of his creative power. Rilke, subject to spells of inspiration interrupted
by arid periods when he was burdened with the uneasiness of living. . . learned
[from Rodin] the value of this “always working” and tried hard to attain it
himself. . . he never did. . .
JB Greene & MDH Norton, intro to Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 1892-
1910

. . . – the Great Book that says we existed.

Fernando Pessoa , The Book of Disquiet

=
In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is
wise.
Prov 10:19

“Michelangelo was wont to say,” recounted Giovanni Gelli, “that only those
figures were good from which one had removed the effortful labor, that is,
produced with such skill that they appeared the result of nature rather than art.”
– Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times article on Michelanelo’s sketches
March24 06 –
(Maybe that’s what attracts me to primitive artists – they seem to do away with
the middleman and simply act from their nature, which is to inhabit, receive,
transmit, these symbols)
“On the other hand, in the same article, Wullshlager says of on sketch:
Adam’s stretching motion is so persuasive because of the naturalness of the
observation, but in fact it depends on an entirely contrived dislocation of the
upper body.
“An unrivalled skill at blurring boundaries between artifice and the
realities of the human frame, and at placing his subjects in theatrically
enthralling compositions, creates the heightened expressiveness that makes
the show such a rich emotional experience.”

“In the extremes of Christian iconography. . . Michelangelo found a visual

language for human hope, desire, and despair. We have long lost that
language. . .” - ibid

=
First thought best thought.

31
Jack Kerouac
=

[Pianist Keith Jarrett’s philosophy:] “I have to not play what’s in my ears, if

there’s something in my ears,” he has said. “ I have to find a way for my
hands to start the concert without me.” He looks not for the first thought, but
for something before thought.

FT article on Meil Mallarkey and the Comedy Store’s improv comedy by

David Honiggman, March 35/26 06:
[Improv comedy players] don’t censor themselves, and they don’t block other
players’ offers.
“When I hear free improvisers talk,”says Mallarkey, “they’re speaking my
language: silences, gaps, incorporating mistakes.” . . . When it is done well
improv looks like nothing. The hardest element of preparation is clearing
one’s mind.
“It’s skating along in a Zen trance,” says Mallarkey.” Afterwards, you don’t
remember anything.”

=
And it was then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an
explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not
explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more
significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing. . .
Tennesee Williams, “A Violin Case and a Cofffin” (short story)
=
If I'm really after failure, then let me be
informed: I can have all the failure I want if
I'm willing to live with a little success.
=
All dull doubt and tomfoolery – goodbye!
(Jack Kerouac – On The Road)
=
Dreams may also have supplied inspiration. When asked how he came up with
some of his ideas, McKillop is reputed to have said, “Well, you just eat a big
mess of fatback and go to bed and go to sleep and dream how to do it.”
(Jack L. Lindsay, Edgar Alexander McKillop [a N.Carolina wood carver ca.
1930’s])

32
=

=
There are the things I receive – voices, mostly – and the things I’m
called on to imagine – the scenes and contexts for the dialogs. The
older I get, the longer I live, the more time the realities are given to
grind away my childhood -- then the harder it is to sit down and
imagine; and more and more it feels like work.
=
Nobody wants you to put your hand in a sacred entrail.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
=
Without hesitation, without inner debate, I entered into the inheritance
of every modern Russian writer intent on the truth: I must write simply
to ensure that it was not all forgotten, that posterity might someday
come to know of it. Publication in my own lifetime I must shut out of
my mind, out of my dreams.
I put away my idle dream. And in its place there was only the
surety that my work would not be in vain, that it would someday smite
the heads I had in my sights and that those who received its invisible
emanations would understand. I no more rebelled against lifelong
silence than against the lifelong impossibility of freeing my feet from
the pull of gravity. As I finished one piece after another, at first in the
camps, then in exile, then after rehabilitation, first verses, then plays,
and later prose works too, I had only one desire: to keep all these
things out of sight and myself with them.
In the camp this meant committing my verse – many thousands
of lines – to memory. To help me with this I improvised decimal
counting beads and, in transit prisons, broke up matchsticks and used
the fragments as tallies. As I approached the end of my sentence I grew
more confident of my powers of memory, and began writing down and
memorizing prose – dialogue at first, but then, bit by bit, whole densely
written passages. My memory found room for them! It worked. But
more and more of my time – in the end as much as one week every
month – went into the regular repetition of all I had memorized.

from The Oak and the Calf, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

33
Only paradise or the sea could make me give up music.

Music is everything.
God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.

-- E.M. Cioran (Tears & Saints)

=
Reviewers: If I compose something over a period of years, and
they take it in over a period of hours and respond to it in a matter
of minutes, they’re going to sound pretty stupid.
They’re just naturally going to sound to me like thoughtless idiots.
But not to the people who read the reviews, because they haven’t
read the book yet.
=
They accomplish the impossible, and I want more. I want the
impossibly impossible.
=

=
The exquisite velvety “Study (Imaginary Portrait of Pope Pius XII)”,
depicting a menacing figure rising from the grey shadows of a luscious
curtained ground, still bears the marks of the slashes with which the
artist tried to destroy it as [his patron] Robert Sainsbury fought off the
knife, and managed to take the canvas home as a cornerstone of his
collection.
Jacki Wullshlager, article on Francis Bacon
=
One has got to remember as a painter that there is a great beauty in the
color of meat.
Francis Bacon
=

The conscious problems with which one is concerned in the actual

writing are more those of a quasi-musical nature, in the

34
arrangement of metric and pattern, than of a conscious exposition
of ideas.
T. S. Eliot
=
But what is art, really, but a good instinct for staying alive in your
own alley?
Hunter S. Thompson
Letter to Paul Simonin, Nov 25, 1964, San Francisco
-
Don’t loaf and invite inspiration. Light out after it with a club.
Jack London
(Quoted by Douglas Brinkley’s editors note to 1st vol of
H.S. Thompson’s letters)
=
The best thing about being semi-famous is that I’m semi-obscure.
=

Groveling is wrong for the soul, like

grappling with whores in a drugstore.
Hunter S. Thompson (2004)
====
Ernest Hemingway:

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if
they had really happened.

All modern American literature comes from one book

by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were

seeing them for the first time.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the

best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write
better than I can.

35
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched
from the start and you especially have to be hurt like
hell before you can write seriously. But when you get
the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.

I don't like to write like God. It is only because you

never do it, though, that the critics think you can't
do it.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but

always to stop when there was still something there
in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night
from the springs that fed it.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from

listening carefully. Most people never listen.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people

never listen.

It's none of their business that you have to learn

how to write. Let them think you were born that
way.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what

I feel in the best and simplest way.

Never confuse movement with action.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the

Baroque is over.

36
That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any
good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

The good parts of a book may be only something a

writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the
wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as
the other.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it

were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then
it explodes and that is my idea.
=
Play it fucking loud.
- Bob Dylan to the band just before doing “Like a
Rolling Stone” at Albert Hall while everybody was
booing his change to rocknroll. . .
=
Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"

The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's

always no, it's time for a new project or a new
career.

How to evaluate criticism

Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let

us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile
and nod a lot. Then review what was said very
carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same
thing about some facet of your story - a plot twist

37
 that doesn't work, a character who rings false,
stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles -
change that facet. It doesn't matter if you really
liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people
are telling you something is wrong with you piece,
it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that
same thing, I'd still suggest changing it. But if
everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing
something different, you can safely disregard what
all of them say

Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when

he is getting warmer - you start getting little
jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal
letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It's
lonely out there in the cold, but there are
encouraging voices ... unless there is nothing in
your words which warrants encouragement. I think
you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-
illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you'll
know which way to go ... or when to turn back.
-- Stephen King (“Everything You need to know
about writing successfully. . . in ten minutes)
=
To clarify the action in a scene, make believe you are a
camera filming the action shot by shot.

Stein's formula, 1+1=1/2, designed to remind writers that

conveying the same matter more than once in different words
diminishes the effect of what is said. If the same matter is said in
two different ways, either alone has a stronger effect.

38
When revising, substitute precise words and phrases for
top-of-the-head words that flow into first drafts.
Sol Stein (editor)
=

Anton Chekhov on Writing:

When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make
the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder — that seems to give a
kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more
clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be
more cold. ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the
impression you make. — To Lydia Avilova, March 19, 1892 & April
29, 1892
I will begin with what in my opinion is your lack of restraint. You are
like a spectator in a theatre who expresses his enthusiasm so
unrestrainedly that he prevents himself and others from hearing. That
lack of restraint is particularly noticeable in the descriptions of nature
with which you interrupt dialogues; when one reads them, these
descriptions, one wishes they were more compact, shorter, say two or
three lines. — To Maxim Gorky, December 3, 1898
Another piece of advice: when you read proof cross out as many
adjectives and adverbs as you can. You have so many modifiers that
the reader has trouble understanding and gets worn out. It is
comprehensible when I write: "The man sat on the grass," because it is
clear and does not detain one's attention. On the other hand, it is
difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: "The tall, narrow-
chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the
green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat
down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully." The brain can't
grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously.
And then one other thing. You are lyrical by nature, the timber of your
soul is soft. If you were a composer you would avoid writing marches.
It is unnatural for your talent to curse, shout, taunt, denounce with rage.
Therefore, you'll understand if I advise you, in proofreading, to
eliminate the "sons of bitches," "curs," and "flea-bitten mutts" that
appear here and there on the pages of Life. — To Maxim Gorky,
September 3, 1899
Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing

39
of the soil. The muscles of the horse are as taut as fiddle-strings, and
suddenly a horse-fly alights on its croup, buzzing and stinging. The
horse's skin quivers, it waves its tail. What is the fly buzzing about? It
probably doesn't know itself. It simply has a restless nature and wants
to make itself felt — "I'm alive, too, you know!" it seems to say.
"Look, I know how to buzz, there's nothing I can't buzz about!" I've
been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't
remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good
advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was
Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of
a ditch. — Quoted by Maxim Gorky in "Anton Chekhov," On
Literature
If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the
last.
... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish
things.
But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly
and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez,
and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: "My work is
literature." — "Excellent People"
I think descriptions of nature should be very short and always be à
propos. Commonplaces like "The setting sun, sinking into the waves of
the darkening sea, cast its purple gold rays, etc," "Swallows, flitting
over the surface of the water, twittered gaily" — eliminate such
commonplaces. You have to choose small details in describing nature,
grouping them in such a way that if you close your eyes after reading it
you can picture the whole thing. For example, you'll get a picture of a
moonlit night if you write that on the dam of the mill a piece of broken
bottle flashed like a bright star and the black shadow of a dog or a wolf
rolled by like a ball, etc. ... In the realm of psychology you also need
details. God preserve you from commonplaces. Best of all, shun all
descriptions of the characters' spiritual state. You must try to have that
state emerge clearly from their actions. Don't try for too many
characters. The center of gravity should reside in two: he and she. —
To AP Chekhov, May 10, 1886
A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He
is a man who has signed a contract with his conscience and his sense of
duty.

40
I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible
to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to
keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky
Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean — wherever my
imagination ranges. — Anton Chekhov
When you fashion a story you necessarily concern yourself with its
limits: out of slew of main and secondary characters you choose only
one — the wife or the husband — place him against the background
and describe him alone and therefore also emphasize him, while you
scatter the others in the background like small change, and you get
something like the night sky: a single large moon and a slew of very
small stars. But the moon doesn't turn out right because you can see it
only when the other stars are visible too, but the stars aren't set off. So I
turn out a sort of patchwork quilt rather than literature. What can I do? I
simply don't know. I will simply depend on all-healing time. — To
Alexei Suvorin, October 27, 1888
You are right in demanding that an artist approach his work
consciously, but you are confusing two concepts: the solution of a
problem and the correct formulation of a problem. Only the second is
required of the artist. — To Alexei Suvorin, October 27, 1888
It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense.
Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything.
The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And
if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he
sees — this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of
thought, and a great step forward. — To Alexei Suvorin, May 30, 1888
I write the beginning calmly and don't hold myself back, but by the
middle I start feeling uneasy and apprehensive that the story will come
out too long. I have to keep in mind that the Northern Herald is low in
funds and that I am one of its more expensive contributors. That's why
my beginning always seems as promising as if I'd started a novel, the
middle is crumpled together and timid, and the end is all fireworks,
like the end of a brief sketch. Whether you like it or not, the first thing
you have to worry about when you're working up a story is its
framework. From your mass of heroes and semi-heroes, you choose
one individual, a wife or a husband, place him against the background,
and portray only that person and emphasize only him. The others you

41
scatter in the background like so much small change. The result is
something like the firmament: one large moon surrounded by a mass
of tiny stars. But the moon doesn't work, because it can only be
understood once the other stars are understandable, and the stars are
not sufficiently delineated. So instead of literature I get a patchwork
quilt. What can I do? I don't know. I have no idea. I'll just have to trust
to all-healing time. — To Alexei Suvorin, October 22, 1888
One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without
making a mistake.
My business is to be talented, that is, to be capable of selecting the
important moments from the trivial ones. ... It's about time for writers
— particularly those who are genuine artists — to recognize that in
this world you cannot figure out everything. Just have a writer who the
crowds trust be courageous enough and declare that he does not
understand everything, and that lone will represent a major contribution
to the way people think, a long leap forward.
I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view — I
change it every month — and so I'll have to limit myself to
descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how
they speak. — To Dmitry Grigorovich, October 9, 1888
The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness
between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or
conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor
monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing
else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one. — To
Alexei Pleshcheyev, October 4, 1888
One has to write what one sees, what one feels, truthfully, sincerely. I
am often asked what it was that I was wanting to say in this or that
story. To these questions I never have any answer. There is nothing I
want to say. My concern is to write, not to teach! And I can write about
anything you like. ... Tell me to write about this bottle, and I will give
you a story entitled "The Bottle." Living truthful images generate
thought, but thought cannot create an image.
In my opinion it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as God,
pessimism, etc; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions,
said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist is not meant to
be a judge of his characters and what they say; his only job is to be an
impartial witness. I heard two Russians in a muddled conversation
about pessimism, a conversation that solved nothing; all I am bound to

42
do is reproduce that conversation exactly as I heard it. Drawing
conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be
talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from
unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their
language. — To Alexei Suvorin, May 30, 1888
The suicide of a seventeen-year-old boy is a very promising and
tempting theme, but a frightening one to undertake. An issue so painful
to us all calls for a painfully forceful response, and do we young
writers have the inner resources for it? No. When you guarantee the
success of this theme, you are judging by your own standards. But
then, in addition to talent, the men of your generation had erudition,
schooling, iron and phosphorus, while contemporary talents have
nothing of the sort. Frankly speaking, there is reason to rejoice that they
keep away from serious problems. Let them have a go at your
seventeen-year-old, and I am certain that X, completely unaware of
what he is doing, will slander him and pile lie upon blasphemy with
the purest of intentions; Y will give him a shot of pallid and petty
tendentiousness; while Z will explain away the suicide as a psychosis.
Your boy is of a good, pure nature. He seeks after God. He is loving,
sensitive and deeply hurt. To handle a figure like that, an author has to
be capable of suffering, while all our contemporary authors can do is
whine and snivel. — To Dmitry Grigorovich, January 12, 1888
Critical articles, even the unjust, abusive kind, are usually met with a
silent bow. Such is literary etiquette. Answering back goes against
custom, and anyone who indulges in it is justly accused of excessive
vanity. ... The fate of literature (both major and minor) would be a
pitiful one if it were at the mercy of personal opinions. Point number
one. And number two, there is no police force in existence that can
consider itself competent in matters of literature. I agree that we can't
do without the muzzle or the stick, because sharpers ooze their way
into literature just as anywhere else. But no matter how hard you try,
you won't come up with a better police force for literature than
criticism and the author's own conscience. People have been at it since
the beginning of creation, but they've invented nothing better. — To
Maria Kiselyova, January 14, 1887
"Do you know," Ivan Bunin recalls Anton Chekhov saying to him in
1899, near the end of his too-short life, "for how many years I shall be
read? Seven." "Why seven?" Bunin asked. "Well," Chekhov answered,
"seven and a half then." — quoted by Donald Fanger, New York Times,
March 14, 1999

43
Your statement that the world is "teeming with villains and
villainesses" is true. Human nature is imperfect, so it would be odd to
perceive none but the righteous. Requiring literature to dig up a "pearl"
from the pack of villains is tantamount to negating literature altogether.
Literature is accepted as an art because it depicts life as it actually is. Its
aim is the truth, unconditional and honest. Limiting its functions to as
narrow a field as extracting "pearls" would be as deadly for art as
requiring Levitan to draw a tree without any dirty bark or yellowed
leaves. A "pearl" is a fine thing, I agree. But the writer is not a pastry
chef, he is not a cosmetician and not an entertainer. He is a man bound
by contract to his sense of duty and to his conscience. Once he
undertakes this task, it is too late for excuses, and no matter how
horrified, he must do battle with his squeamishness and sully his
imagination with the grime of life. He is just like any ordinary reporter.
What would you say if a newspaper reporter as a result of
squeamishness or a desire to please his readers were to limit his
descriptions to honest city fathers, high-minded ladies, and virtuous
railroadmen?
To a chemist there is nothing impure on earth. The writer should be just
as objective as the chemist; he should liberate himself from everyday
subjectivity and acknowledge that manure piles play a highly
respectable role in the landscape and that evil passions are every bit as
much a part of life as good ones. — To Maria Kiselyova, January 14,
1887
=

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

T.S. Eliot

<><><><><><><><><><><
Stephen King – “On Writing” excerpts

1. The basics: forget plot, but remember the importance of

'situation'

I won't try to convince you that I've never plotted any

more than I'd try to convince you that I've never told a
lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust

44
plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are
largely plotless, even when you add in all our
reasonable precautions and careful planning; and
second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity
of real creation aren't compatible. A strong enough
situation renders the whole question of plot moot. The
most interesting situations can usually be expressed as
a What-if question:

What if vampires invaded a small New England village?

(Salem's Lot).

What if a young mother and her son became trapped in

their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cujo).

These were situations which occurred to me - while

showering, while driving, while taking my daily walk -
and which I eventually turned into books. In no case
were they plotted, not even to the extent of a single
note jotted on a single piece of scrap paper.

2. Similes and metaphors - the rights, the wrongs

When a simile or metaphor doesn't work, the results

are sometimes funny and sometimes embarrassing.
Recently, I read this sentence in a forthcoming novel I
prefer not to name: 'He sat stolidly beside the corpse,
waiting for the medical examiner as patiently as a man
waiting for a turkey sandwich.' If there is a clarifying
connection here, I wasn't able to make it.

My all-time favourite similes come from the hard-

45
boiled-detective fiction of the 40s and 50s, and the
literary descendants of the dime-dreadful writers.
These favourites include 'It was darker than a carload
of assholes' (George V Higgins) and 'I lit a cigarette
[that] tasted like a plumber's handkerchief' (Raymond
Chandler).

3. Dialogue: talk is 'sneaky'

It's dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is

crucial in defining their characters - only what people
do tells us more about what they're like, and talk is
sneaky: what people say often conveys their character
to others in ways of which they - the speakers - are
completely unaware.

Well-crafted dialogue will indicate if a character is

smart or dumb, honest or dishonest, amusing or an old
sobersides. Good dialogue, such as that written by
George V Higgins, Peter Straub or Graham Greene, is a
delight to read; bad dialogue is deadly.

4. Characters: nobody is the 'bad-guy'

The job boils down to two things: paying attention to

how the real people around you behave and then telling
the truth about what you see. It's also important to
remember that no one is 'the bad guy' or 'the best
friend' or 'the whore with a heart of gold' in real life; in
real life we each of us regard ourselves as the main
character, the protagonist, the big cheese; the camera
is on us, baby. If you can bring this attitude into your
fiction, you may not find it easier to create brilliant

46
characters, but it will be harder for you to create the
sort of one-dimensional dopes that populate so much
pop fiction.

5. Pace: fast is not always best

Pace is the speed at which your narrative unfolds.

There is a kind of unspoken (hence undefended and
unexamined) belief in publishing circles that the most
commercially successful stories and novels are fast-
paced. Like so many unexamined beliefs in the
publishing business, this idea is largely bullshit... which
is why, when books like Umberto Eco's The Name of
the Rose suddenly break out of the pack and climb the
bestseller lists, publishers and editors are astonished. I
suspect that most of them ascribe these books'
unexpected success to unpredictable and deplorable
lapses into good taste on the part of the reading
public.

I believe each story should be allowed to unfold at its

own pace, and that pace is not always double time.
Nevertheless, you need to beware - if you slow the
pace down too much, even the most patient reader is
apt to grow restive.

6. Do the research, but don't overdo it for the reader

You may be entranced with what you're learning about

flesh-eating bacteria, the sewer system of New York, or
the IQ potential of Collie pups, but your readers are
probably going to care a lot more about your
characters and your story.

47
Exceptions to the rule? Sure, aren't there always?
There have been very successful writers - Arthur Hailey
and James Michener are the first ones that come to my
mind - whose novels rely heavily on fact and research.
Other popular writers, such as Tom Clancy and Patricia
Cornwell, are more story-oriented, but still deliver large
dollops of factual information along with the
melodrama. I sometimes think that these writers appeal
to a large segment of the reading population who feel
that fiction is somehow immoral, a low taste which can
only be justified by saying, 'Well, ahem, yes, I do read
[fill in author's name here], but only on airplanes and in
hotel rooms that don't have CNN; also, I learned a
great deal about [fill in appropriate subject here].'

Others from Stephen King

1. Get to the point.

Don’t waste your reader’s time with too much back-story,

long intros or longer anecdotes about your life. Reduce the
noise. Reduce the babbling. In On Writing King gets to his
points quickly. Get to your point quickly too before your
reader loses patience and moves on.

2. Write a draft. Then let it rest.

King recommends that you crank out a first draft and then
put it in your drawer to let it rest. Now, how long you let
your text rest may vary. King puts his manuscripts away
for several months before rereading and start the editing

48
process.

I often let a post rest for a day or two before I start editing
(as I´m sure many other bloggers do from time to time
too).

This enables you to get out of the mindset you had when
you wrote the draft and get a more detached and clear
perspective on the text. It then becomes easier to edit, add
and cut in a sometimes kinda ruthless way. The result is
most often a better text.

3. Cut down your text.

When you revisit your text it´s time to kill your darlings
and remove all the superfluous words and sentences.
Removing will declutter your text and often get your
message through with more clarity and a bigger emotional
punch.

Don´t remove too much text though or you may achieve

the opposite effects instead. King got the advice to cut
down his texts by 10 percent from an old rejection-letter
and has followed this advice for decades. While editing my
blog I´ve found that 10 percent seems to be a pretty good
figure not just for mammoth-sized books.

4. Be relatable and honest.

King has an honest voice in his fiction and in his memoir.

He tells it like it is and makes us relate to him and his
characters. Since King´s fiction often is of an odd kind
with strange plots that seldom happen to normal people I
think one of his strengths as a writer is being able to write
relatable content anyway.

49
One of the keys to doing that is to have an honest voice
and honest characters with both bad and good sides to
them. People we can relate to with all of their faults,
passions, fears, weaknesses and good moments. King´s
characters seem human. That creates a strong connection
to the reader who starts caring about the characters.

Another key to being honest and relatable is keeping a

conversational style. Keeping it simple and using language
that isn’t unnecessarily complicated. Using the words that
first come to mind.

5. Don´t care too much what others may think.

King admits to being needy about the emotional feedback

he gets when he lets his wife read a new story for the first
time. He gets a kick out of hearing her laugh so she cries
or just cry because something in manuscript really touched
her. But he has also gotten tons of mail over the years
from people who confuse his sometimes nasty characters
with the writer. Or just thinks he should wind up in hell.
And King hasn´t always been a favourite among literary
critics either.

But from what I gather he just sits down at his desk and
keeps writing every morning anyway. If you listen too
much to your critics you won´t get much done. Your
writing will probably become worse and less fun. And
criticism is often not even about you anyway .

6. Read a lot.

When you read you always pick up things. Sometimes it

might be reminders about what you know you should be
doing while you write. Sometimes it’s some cool idea or
just the world and atmosphere the writer is painting.

50
Sometimes it’s something totally new that makes your jaw
drop. That one is my favourite. And sometimes you learn
what you should avoid doing. There are almost always
lessons you can learn.

If you want to be a better writer you need to read a lot to

get fresh input, broaden your horizons and deepen your
knowledge. And to evolve you need to mix yourself up
with new influences and see what happens.

How do you find time to read more? You can cut down on
other evening activities like watching TV-shows you don´t
care for that much anyway. Or, as King suggests, you can
bring a book to waiting rooms, treadmills or toilets. I like
to plug in an audiobook while I´m on the bus or walking
somewhere.

7. Write a lot.

I’ve saved the most important tip for last. To become a

better writer you probably – and not so surprisingly - need
to write more.

Many of the best in different fields – Bruce Springsteen ,

Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods - have gone beyond
normal limits of practice. And so they reap extraordinary
results.

But what do you do when you don´t feel like writing?

Waiting for inspiration can become a long wait.

One good way to get around this is to find an effective

solution to reduce procrastination . You may have to try a
few before you find one that works for you. Another way is
well, just to do it . And if you just get going your emotions

51
changes a lot of the time and any initial resistance
becomes fun and enthusiasm instead

Another – Avoid the passive voice.

MORE FROM STEPHEN KING:

Be talented

This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can

hear someone shouting, and here we are, ready to
get into a discussion right up there with "what is the
meaning of life?" for weighty pronouncements and
total uselessness. For the purposes of the beginning
writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual
success - publication and money. If you wrote
something for which someone sent you a check, if
you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you
then paid the light bill with the money, I consider
you talented.

Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you

are calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And
some of you are calling me bad names. Are you
calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of
the Great English Departments of America is
screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or
what about you, you dyslexic moron?

Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject.

We're not talking about good or bad here. I'm
interested in telling you how to get your stuff
published, not in critical judgments of who's good or
bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the

52
check's been spent, anyway. I have my own
opinions, but most times I keep them to myself.
People who are published steadily and are paid for
what they are writing may be either saints or
trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many
someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are
communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest
part of writing successfully is being talented, and in
the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one
who doesn't get paid. If you're not talented, you
won't succeed. And if you're not succeeding, you
should know when to quit.

When is that? I don't know. It's different for each

writer. Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor
after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. After six
thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's
time you tried painting or computer programming.

Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he

is getting warmer - you start getting little jotted
notes on your rejection slips, or personal letters . . .
maybe a commiserating phone call. It's lonely out
there in the cold, but there are encouraging voices
... unless there is nothing in your words which
warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to
yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion as
possible. If your eyes are open, you'll know which
way to go ... or when to turn back.

Be neat

Type. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper,

53
never that erasable onion-skin stuff. If you've
marked up your manuscript a lot, do another draft.

Be self-critical

If you haven't marked up your manuscript a lot, you

did a lazy job. Only God gets things right the first
time. Don't be a slob.

Remove every extraneous word

You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine.

Get one and try your local park. You want to write
for money? Get to the point. And if you remove all
the excess garbage and discover you can't find the
point, tear up what you wrote and start all over
again . . . or try something new.

Never look at a reference book while doing a first

draft

You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your

dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac,
and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your
thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things
creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks
college students too lazy to read the assigned novels
buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt
for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no
exceptions to this rule. You think you might have
misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice:
either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making
sure you have it right - and breaking your train of

54
thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or
just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why
not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere?
And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and
you find you don't have it in your head, why not
write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but
later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do
anything else except go to the bathroom, and only
do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

Know the markets

Only a dimwit would send a story about giant

vampire bats surrounding a high school to McCall's.
Only a dimwit would send a tender story about a
mother and daughter making up their differences on
Christmas Eve to Playboy ... but people do it all the
time. I'm not exaggerating; I have seen such stories
in the slush piles of the actual magazines. If you
write a good story, why send it out in an ignorant
fashion? Would you send your kid out in a
snowstorm dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank
top? If you like science fiction, read the magazines.
If you want to write confession stories, read the
magazines. And so on. It isn't just a matter of
knowing what's right for the present story; you can
begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall rhythms,
editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine's entire slant.
Sometimes your reading can influence the next
story, and create a sale.

Write to entertain

55
Does this mean you can't write "serious fiction"? It
does not. Somewhere along the line pernicious critics
have invested the American reading and writing
public with the idea that entertaining fiction and
serious ideas do not overlap. This would have
surprised Charles Dickens, not to mention Jane
Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Bernard
Malamud, and hundreds of others. But your serious
ideas must always serve your story, not the other
way around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a
soapbox.

Ask yourself frequently, "Am I having fun?"

The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always

no, it's time for a new project or a new career.

How to evaluate criticism

Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let us

say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and
nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully.
If your critics are all telling you the same thing about
some facet of your story - a plot twist that doesn't
work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative,
or half a dozen other possibles - change that facet. It
doesn't matter if you really liked that twist of that
character; if a lot of people are telling you something
is wrong with you piece, it is. If seven or eight of
them are hitting on that same thing, I'd still suggest
changing it. But if everyone - or even most everyone
- is criticizing something different, you can safely
disregard what all of them say.

56
Observe all rules for proper submission

Return postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.

An agent? Forget it. For now

Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients.

10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay
the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that
or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories
around yourself. If you've done a novel, send around
query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow
up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript
complete. And remember Stephen King's First Rule
of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal
experience: You don't need one until you're making
enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making
that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good
agents.

If it's bad, kill it

When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the

law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
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<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
Jan 10 2006

Writing Advice 3

Published by scott at 1:33 pm under Writing &

57
Publishing ,Writing Advice :

While I was finishing Specials my fictional brain

started to break, so I decided to take some time off
from narrative. Fortunately, a collection of letters
written by the great hard-boiled writer Raymond
Chandler leapt from the depths of my Sydney
storage unit and into my hands.

Chandler’s technique for writing letters was to stay

up at night drinking and talking into a tape recorder
(a wire recorder in those days, actually). The next
day his secretary would type up his rantings and
send them in the mail. This led to many a drunken
tongue-lashing, and a fair amount of solid writing
advice, being preserved for posterity.

As I re-read the letters, I realized that I’ve stolen a

lot of Chandler’s writing techniques over the years,
especially his “four-hour rule” (see below), which
I’ve expounded to many a writing class. So I figured
it was time to ‘fess up and show all of you the source
material.

So here is the unalloyed Raymond Chandler on the

subject of writing:

1. Letter to Frederick Lewis Allen, editor of Harper’s

Magazine
7 May 1948
My theory was that [the readers] just thought they
cared about . . . the action; that really, although they
didn’t know it, they cared very little about the action.

58
The things that they really cared about, and that I cared
about, were the creation of emotion through dialogue
and description; the things they remembered, that
haunted them, were not for example that a man got
killed, but that in the moment of death he was trying to
pick a paper clip up off the polished surface of a desk,
and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a
look of strain of his face and his mouth was half opened
in a kind of tormented grin, and the last thing in the
world he thought about was death. He didn’t even hear
death knock at the door. That damn paper clip kept
slipping away from his fingers and he just wouldn’t push
it to the edge of the desk and catch it as it fell.

That paper clip image is very goosepimple-making, a

classic noir example of the crumpled little guy facing
oblivion. Of course, we all know that a guy trying to
pick up a paper clip on a hoverboard would be
cooler. And like, especially if the paper clip exploded
...

This next motivational technique is one I always tell

aspiring writers to try:

2. Letter to Alex Barris, an interview by mail

18 March 1949
The important thing is that there should be a space of
time, say four hours a day at least, when a professional
writer doesn’t do anything else but write. He doesn’t
have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t
try. He can look out of the window or stand on his head
or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other
positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at
magazines, or write checks. Write or nothing. It’s the

59
same principle as keeping order in a school. If you make
the pupils behave, they will learn something just to keep
from being bored. I find it works. Two very simple rules,
a. you don’t have to write. B. you can’t do anything else.
The rest comes of itself.

Put those two rules on your refrigerator and you’ll

have a novel within a year. Or at least someone else
who uses your refrigerator will.

The letter below reminds me of something Kingsley

Amis said: “Sometimes the hardest part of writing is
getting the characters out of the pub and into the
cab.” Writers don’t just get stuck at the earth-
shattering, life-changing decisions that our
characters make; the little details of reality
management are actually quite tricky and
frustrating. Never assume you’re a crap writer just
because you can’t get someone across a room—it
happens to all of us.

3. Letter to Paul Brooks, a publisher working on a

Chandler collection
19 July 1949
When I started out to write fiction I had the great
disadvantage of having absolutely no talent for it. I
couldn’t get the characters in and out of rooms. They
lost their hats and so did I. If more than two people
were on scene I couldn’t keep one of them alive. Give
me two people snotting at each other across a desk and
I am happy. A crowded canvas just bewilders me.

This letter to Alfred Hitchcock contains fantastic

advice for writers as well as film-makers. Just

60
substitute the words “wicked-cool sentence” or
“scintillating simile” for “camera shot.”

4. 6 December 1950
As a friend and well-wisher, I urge you just once in your
long and distinguished career . . . to get a sound and
sinewy story into the script and sacrifice no part of its
soundness for an interesting camera shot. Sacrifice a
camera shot if necessary. There will always be another
camera shot just as good. There is never another
motivation just as good.

Beyond his anti-Agatha Christie snark, there is an

excellent point below about the difference between
novels and short stories. A lot of writers who excel at
the story level don’t think to “turn the corner” when
attempting the longer form.

5. Letter to Dorothy Gardner, secretary of the

Mystery Writers Association
January 1956
The trouble with most English mystery writers, however
well known in their world, is that they can’t turn a
corner. About halfway through a book they start fooling
with alibis, analyzing bits and pieces of evidence and so
on. The story dies on them. Any book which is any good
has to turn the corner. You get to the point where
everything implicit in the original situation has been
developed or explored, and then a new element has to
be introduced which is not implied from the beginning
but which is seen to be part of the situation when it
shows up.

Speaking of snark . . . bet you didn’t know that

61
Raymond Chandler’s brief foray into science fiction
actually predicted the rise of Google as an
information search service. Check this out:

6. Letter to H.N Swanson

14 March 1953
Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction? It’s a
scream. It’s written like this: “I checked out with K19 on
Abadabaran III, and stepped out through the
crummaliote hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I
cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through
the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink
pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Bryllis ran
swiftly on five legs using their other two to send out
crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable,
but I caught the range on my wrist computer through
the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin
violet glow was icecold against the rust-colored
mountains. The Bryllis shrank to half an inch long and I
worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it
wasn’t enough. The sudden brightness swung me
around and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had
exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and
Google had told me it wasn’t enough. He was right.”
They pay brisk money for this crap?
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
><>
=
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
=
She always says about young painters, about anything, once
everybody knows they are good the adventure is over. And
adds Picasso with a sigh, even after everybody knows they

62
are good, not any more people really like them than they did
when only the few knew they were good.
- Gertrude Stein The Autobiography of Alice B.
Toklas
-
I interviewed Elmore [Leonard] at a Tucson book
festival in 2010. Just before going onstage we
thumbed through a program listing all the esteemed
authors, of which he was easily the best-known and,
he told me, the one who had won no prestigious
fellowships and few awards.

"Most of these writers
don't write for a living," he said. "They write for tenure.
Or for the New York Times. Or to get invited to
conferences like this. When you write to make the
rent or send your kids to school, you learn how to
write without a lot of nonsense."


- NPR’s Scott Simon
=

Why did I not launch into sheer nonsense immediately?

Because, like others, I was afraid of it.
Henry Miller, Sexus, (quoted in Henry Miller on Writing)
=
Treat your dismissal as you would an atmospheric phenomenon.
– From Chekhov’s notebooks
=
I know this, with a sure and certain knowledge: a man’s work is
nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art,
those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart
first opened.
Albert Camus
=
The most striking characteristic of Po Chu-i’s poetry is its verbal
simplicity. There is a story that he was in the habit of reading his

63
poems to an old peasant woman and altering any expressions which
she did not understand.
Arthur Waley - Translations from the Chinese

The greatest thing a human being ever does is to see something and tell
what he sees in a plain way.
John Ruskin
=

The treatise was limpid, universal; it seemed not to have been written
by a concrete person, but by any man or, perhaps, by all men.
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Theologians” (in Labyrinths)
--
No iron can enter the human heart, like a period placed at just the right
moment.
Isaac Babel
=
Detailed descriptions do not convey distinct images, rather they make
us lose all perspective.

Any attempt at detailed description gives rise to the feeling that only a
fraction of all that could be said has in fact been told. A detailed
description lures us into the infinite and shows us the elusive depth of
things. Mere naming, on the other hand, automatically transforms
things into simple, motionless images. . . The world is captured in the
word. . . The brief labels isolate things by giving them sharp outlines.
The European Folk Tale; Form and Nature; Max Luthi
=
Race-car drivers strive always to be driving just one hair short of
a massive wreck. That’s the way I want to write.

=
Luis the Smiling Bear’s Lessons

Keep It Simple
Follow the Grain
Complete It – Don’t Finish It

64
 =x=x=x=x=

Jules Renard (1864-1910) Journals:

1887

The true artist will write in, as it were, small leaps, on a hundred
subjects that surge unawares into his mind. In this way, nothing
is forced. Everything has an unwilled, natural charm. One does
not provoke: one waits.

A scrupulous inexactness.

In the goodness of things, the sea-shell is related to the stone.

“. . . In the goodness of things. . .”

1889

I attend the bedding down of the thrushes, the retiring of the

woodcocks, the going to sleep of the woods. All this makes me
stupid. Fortunately, two pages of Taine pull me out of the mud,
and I am in full fantasy, above the world, furiously pursuing the
study of myself, of its decomposition, of our annihilation.

=x=x=x=x=x=

I never practice; I always play.

Wanda Landowska[ ( 1879 – 1959) Polish harpsichordist]

=
Wm Golding, Free Fall:

My darkness reaches out and fumbles at a typewriter with its tongs.

Your darkness reaches out with your tongs and grasps a book.
There are twenty modes of change, filter and translation between us.
What an extravagant coincidence it would be if the exact quality, the

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translucent sweetness of her cheek, the very living curve of bone
between the eyebrow and hair should survive the passage! How can
you share the quality of my terror in the blacked-out cell when I can
only remember it and not re-create it for myself?
=

Stay with the work

Stay on the page.

Stay away from reviews

Don’t be committed to any particular “voice” – Marvin Bell

Don’t look back. – Bob Dylan

=
Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-
morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words
again, though it contradict every thing you said to-
day.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,

adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines. With consistency a great soul has simply
nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with
his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in
hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow
thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every
thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be
misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be
misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and
Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and
Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit

66
that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood.
-- Emerson “Self-Reliance”
=
Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict
myself. – Song of Myself, Whitman
=

One cannot hide his identity under cover of the third

person, nor establish his identity solely through the use of
the first-person singular.
-- Henry Miller
Make a fool of yourself
=
Short then is the time which every man lives, and small the
nook of earth where he lives; and short too the longest
posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a
succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and
who know not even themselves, much less him who died long
ago.
Marcus Aurelius

Hippocrates after curing many diseases himself fell sick and

died. The Chaldaei foretold the deaths of many, and then fate
caught them too. Alexander, and Pompeius, and Caius Caesar.
. . Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration
of the universe, was filled with water internally and died
smeared all over with mud. And lice destroyed Democritus;
and other lice killed Socrates. What means all this? Thou hast
embarked, thou has made the voyage, thou art come to shore;
get out.
-Marcus Aurelius
Seek unemployment.

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To get two hours of work done requires eight free hours. To get eight hours of work
done requires one week entirely free.

Anything goes: any form, any genre, any impulse, any experiment, any word – big
words, slang words, old words, foreign words, weird words, offensive words, dirty words
– any punctuation (including colons semi- and full, parentheses, exclamation points, and
dashes) -- any reference tool or book, any schedule.

=
Write the article first, then do the research.
- Vance Bourjaily

Stephen King: Never look at a reference book while doing a first

draft.

=
The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's
proof that he is fresh out of ideas.
Raymond Chandler

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay

split.
Raymond Chandler

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a

gun in his hand.
Raymond Chandler
=

Seek unemployment. Live apart. Work where the words go: the words go on the
page.

Remember: no obligation but to the people the

characters speak for, and none to those people
except to tell the truth.
Write naked. Write with blood. Write from exile.
=
The true painter learns from things, not from other painters.
The true philosopher learns from his mind, not from doctrine.

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The true poet learns from the parade of images,
not from writers of the past.

-- Yuan Huang-tao (1568-1610, late Ming dynasty)

(a writer of the past)

=
What you can do or think you can do, begin it.
For boldness has Magic, Power, and Genius in it.
Goethe
=

"The work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow
-- suggests no effort and is finished from the beginning."
James McNeill Whistler
=
For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is
going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a
long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do – out of
instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation – look at myself with
objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me
already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.

- Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless (journal during the

making of Fitzcarraldo)

Herzog:
- Iquitos, 25 Sept, 1980
- . . . so that puts and end to another wild goose chase. I’m still prepared
to set out on any other that might present itself.
- Werner Herzog –
- To fail to embrace my dreams now would be a disgrace so great that sin
itself could not find a name for it.

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