David Sedaris Reads Miranda July’s short story “Roy Spivey” for this month’s New Yorker Fiction Podcast. Happy holidays!
"There’s a time and place for everything, and I believe it’s called ‘fan fiction.’"
– Joss Whedon (via writersrelief)
"I write every day as a matter of course … It is not a burden. It is the way I live."
![gabrielle-gantz:
Notes on Writing a Novel
AN ESSAY by Elizabeth Bowen
PLOT.—Essential. The Pre-Essential. Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way.
He is forced towards his plot. By what? By the ‘what is to be said.’ What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated—impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else—x. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move till its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.
Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.
Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense = lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.
Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having beenreached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.
[Read the rest at Narrative magazine]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8nzvlsuMO1qjsf5ho1_400.jpg)
Notes on Writing a Novel
AN ESSAY by Elizabeth Bowen
PLOT.—Essential. The Pre-Essential. Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way.
He is forced towards his plot. By what? By the ‘what is to be said.’ What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated—impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else—x. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move till its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.
Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.
Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense = lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.
Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having beenreached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.
[Read the rest at Narrative magazine]
"I couldn’t live a week without a private library - indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess."
– H. P. Lovecraft (via wordpainting)
(via wbnamerica)
"In fiction, I exercise my nosiness. I am as curious as my cats, and indeed that has led to trouble often enough and used up several of my nine lives. I am an avid listener. I am fascinated by other people’s lives, the choices they make and how that works out through time, what they have done and left undone, what they tell me and what they keep secret and silent, what they lie about and what they confess, what they are proud of and what shames them, what they hope for and what they fear. The source of my fiction is the desire to understand people and their choices through time."
– Marge Piercy (via writersrelief)
"That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth."
–
Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried)
Summer Fiction Sale here July 9 through 15! Everything from children’s and YA to comics to regular ole’ books. Get THE TRUTH.
(via housingworksbookstore)
(Source: booklover, via litreactor)
“As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.”—Ray Bradbury
Maureen Corrigan picks five mysteries you should read this summer: ” All of the following mysteries are written by veterans of the form. Most are part of long-running series; all are standouts, either because of their distinctive literary delights or because of ingenious variations on familiar plots and characters.”
(via 5 New Mysteries Return To The Scene Of The Crime : NPR)
"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
– Muriel Rukeyser (via martinaboone)
"Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself."
– Truman Capote (via martinaboone)
"Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up."
– George Orwell (via martinaboone)
(Source: inspire-quote.com, via martinaboone)
"It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it … now that I can finally do it … I’m really raring to go."
– Erica Jong (via martinaboone)
