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19

Jun

Interviewer:
Do your writer friends have the same habits as you?
Simone de Beauvoir:
No, it's quite a personal matter. Genet, for example, works quite differently. He puts in about twelve hours a day for six months when he's working on something and when he has finished he can let six months go by without doing anything. As I said, I work every day except for two or three months of vacation when I travel and generally don't work at all. I read very little during the year, and when I go away I take a big valise full of books, books that I didn't have time to read. But if the trip lasts a month or six weeks, I do feel uncomfortable, particularly if I'm between two books. I get bored if I don't work.

2 hours ago

Simone de Beauvoir/methods/lit/literature/english literature/writers/writing/author/authors/quotes/

Anne Lamott’s rule for first drafts

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere … The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him.

Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go – but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.”

Anne Lamott in her book on writing, ‘Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life’

(Source: daringtolivefully.com)

4 hours ago

anne lamott/lit/literature/english literature/author/authors/writers on writing/writers/first draft/quotes/rules/rules for writing/

F. Scott. Fitzgerald’s best-known work is The Great Gatsby’, a perennial favourite among English lit teachers for its heavy symbolism, metaphors and historical references. Here, Fitzgerald is depicted with Daisy’s green light in the background. But the good stuff’s in his other works: ‘This Side of Paradise’, ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’, and ‘Tender is the Night’. Fitzgerald loved to write about American decline. The USPS issued this stamp in 1996, which, by coincidence, was itself about to suffer a long decline.

F. Scott. Fitzgerald’s best-known work is The Great Gatsby’, a perennial favourite among English lit teachers for its heavy symbolism, metaphors and historical references. Here, Fitzgerald is depicted with Daisy’s green light in the background.

But the good stuff’s in his other works: ‘This Side of Paradise’, ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’, and ‘Tender is the Night’.

Fitzgerald loved to write about American decline. The USPS issued this stamp in 1996, which, by coincidence, was itself about to suffer a long decline.

6 hours ago 2 notes

the great gatsby/usps/tender is the night/daisy buchanan/jay gatsby/f. scott fitzgerald/fitzgerald/lit/literature/english literature/american authors/baz luhrmann/

17

Jun

[Asked whether he expected a turn in his fortunes as a writer:]


I never expect anything good to happen. I never expected the university to hire me. I thought I was going to starve to death.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, interviewed by academic critic Robert Scholes in October 1966. Vonnegut had been invited to teach at the esteemed Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Source: Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield.

2 days ago 12 notes

kurt vonnegut/lit/literature/english literature/writers on writing/Author/authors/american authors/

Zadie Smith, incredible author and essayist, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She is presently a Professor at New York University’s Creative Writing Program. Smith said that the intense critical praise of her debut novel, White Teeth, gave her temporary writers’ block.

Zadie Smith, incredible author and essayist, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She is presently a Professor at New York University’s Creative Writing Program.

Smith said that the intense critical praise of her debut novel, White Teeth, gave her temporary writers’ block.

2 days ago

zadie smith/writers/writers on writing/Author/authors/british authors/women writers/women/female authors/white teeth/

Anthony Trollope’s rule for continuity

“I always began my task by reading the work of the day before, an operation which would take me half an hour, and which consisted chiefly in weighing with my ear the sound of the words and phrases. I would strongly recommend this practice to all tyros in writing. …

“By reading what he has last written, just before he recommences his task, the writer will catch the tone and spirit of what he is then saying, and will avoid the fault of seeming to be unlike himself.”

2 days ago

anthony trollope/lit/literature/english literature/quotes/writers on writing/writers/writing/

15

Jun

Why [Fitzgerald] should be called an author, or why any of us should behave as if he were, has never been satisfactorily explained to me.
A contemporary review of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ by The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

4 days ago

lit/literary criticism/literature/english literature/the great gatsby/authors/author/critics/'constructive' criticism/constructive criticism/gatsby/

A glorified anecdote.
When literary greats attack: H.L. Mencken on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby

4 days ago

lit/literary criticism/literature/english literature/the great gatsby/authors/

It is the only book I have read so often despite failing—in the face of real effort and sincere intentions—to derive almost any pleasure at all from the experience. …

I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent; I think we kid ourselves about the lessons it contains. None of this would matter much to me if Gatsby were not also sacrosanct.

No author is immune: Kathryn Schulz, author, journalist and literary critic, on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby (read more here).’

4 days ago

lit/literary criticism/literature/english literature/the great gatsby/writers on writers/kathryn schulz/gatsby/gatsby movie/

The work: ‘Players’ by Don DeLillo. Annotations: David Foster Wallace. More of his notes here.

The work: ‘Players’ by Don DeLillo. Annotations: David Foster Wallace. More of his notes here.

(Source: flavorwire.com)

4 days ago 2 notes

david foster wallace/don delillo/writers on writers/lit/literary criticism/literature/books/authors/english literature/