Your voice is dim
Your words break up
As if your call
Is from years past
And not across
Mere miles
k
Posts Tagged ‘Writing’
01Jan13
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, Poetry, Writing on 01 Jan 2013| Leave a Comment »
Up Your Aspirations
Posted in Writing, tagged blogging, creative writing, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 30 Dec 2012| Leave a Comment »
One day my mother came home with a slogan from her workplace. “Lower Your Expectations,” it read. Not really the gung-ho mentality of today but hey, it was the ’70s. Anyway, my father saw it, found it somewhat ludicrous, and came back with the flip side: “Up Your Aspirations!” He even had it printed up on a t-shirt.
This probably tells you more about my father than it does my mother.
The point of this (and I have one) is that, as writers, we must manage both our expectations and our aspirations. This came home to because my wife has recently begun to ply her hand at writing, and tonight we had a discussion about what aspirations she might have, as a writer. Sensibly (I thought) she said that, at this point, she doesn’t have aspirations of writing for a living or even for profit. Right now she just wants to play with it and to learn how to be a better writer. I know I’ve harped on this before, but I believe it’s important; writing is a lonely business, and publishing is a cutthroat business. Writing for profit ain’t for the faint.
The View from Here
Posted in Writing, tagged blogging, creative writing, editing, short stories, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 14 Dec 2012| 6 Comments »
I’ve been trolling the blogs, the last few days, reading fiction from new/unpublished writers. I see the same thing, over and over, the same mistakes, repeated.
I don’t know why writers continue to make these mistakes. Read any article or book on modern writing and you’ll see these problems called out. Perhaps it’s that some new writers don’t read books about writing, don’t analyze their own work. I don’t know.
What I do know, is that there are some new writers who read this blog (we’re up to 80+ followers, now, with slow but steady growth), so I thought I’d go over these basic problem areas in a series of posts. I hope it starts a conversation with some of the apprentice writers out there. (more…)
To Be, Or Not To Be
Posted in Books, Culture, Writing, tagged authorship question, conspiracy theory, Oxfordian, Shakespeare, Shakespeare authorship, Stratfordian, writers, Writing on 13 Dec 2012| 5 Comments »
I have been a “Stratfordian” all my life…so far, anyway.
A Stratfordian—for those of you not “up” on the nerdier side of All Things Literary—is someone who believes that the plays and poems of William Shakespeare were written by, well, by William Shakespeare. Of Stratford, that is. As in “Stratford-on-Avon”. Hence: Stratfordian.
I have been a Stratfordian all my life.
So far, anyway.
I’ve Got Style
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged books, creative writing, Fallen Cloud Saga, Flaubert, madame bovary, novel writing, novels, Writing, writing style, writing techniques on 05 Dec 2012| Leave a Comment »
I’ve been reading about Gustave Flaubert and his writing method. “What a bitch of a thing prose is!” he wrote to his friend and lover, Louise Colet. “It’s never finished; there’s always something to redo.” And redo he did.
Flaubert was a definite “basher,” taking up to a week to produce a single page. He once remarked that for the first 125 pages of Madame Bovary, he actually wrote 500 pages. But this constant revision was required to achieve the style for which he aimed.
“A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.”
In reading an analysis of the style he adopted for Madame Bovary, I realized that I, too, have a style. (more…)
Relativity
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged books, creative writing, Flaubert, Hemingway, novel writing, Shakespeare, Writing, writing tips on 04 Dec 2012| 6 Comments »
By the time he was my age, Gustave Flaubert was decades past his peak with Madame Bovary. By the time Hemingway was 54, he was pretty much done. And by the time Shakespeare was as old as I am, he’d been dead a couple of years.
It’s hard to look at facts like these and not get a little depressed. I mean, sure, I didn’t even start writing until I was in my thirties, and didn’t really get into novels until my forties, but…damn! Adding fuel to the fire, a quick search for “writers who started late in life” does not generate a list of late-blooming literary giants.
My mind quickly comes up with all sorts of justifications and explanations as to why so-and-so succeeded early in life and I have not—financial support from others, an early start in the craft, etc., etc.—but it’s all nonsense. As my father once wisely told me, there’s always going to be someone richer, smarter, or more talented than I am. Getting down on myself for not being a genius, for not getting that Nobel Prize for Literature, is silly. More than that, it’s counter-productive.
I don’t write to be famous. I don’t write for immortality. Crap, I don’t even write to make it into the “Who’s Who in American Literature.”
I write because I like it. Because I love it. And that’ll do.
k
October 19, 1964
Posted in Writing, tagged 1960s, childhood memories, creative writing, memoir, Writing on 03 Dec 2012| 4 Comments »
In the years to come, much will be lost to him. Many details will simply not make it past the blinkers of his mind’s eye, and many more will be lost to the unraveling threads of time, but even at five years old, much will survive for him to carry forward.
He comes home from school, running up the hill, shoes scuffing the rough surface of the concrete sidewalk. The sun is bright despite the thin clouds. Past the last corner, he smacks the juniper in his neighbor’s yard, feels the sting of its prickly fronds and smells its sharp scent. He passes under the fading leaves of the Fillingame’s plane tree, kicking a path through the fallen litter. He looks up. His father’s car is in the drive. Dad is home? Already?
Dark, green ivy climbs the yellow stucco of the bungalow’s wall near the front door. He reaches up to turn the knob and enters. It is dark within. Shrouded. Silent. Immediately he knows. Something is wrong. (more…)
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 