inklingfair Some years ago, someone told me: If you don’t write it down, you’ll lose it. This is more of an exercise in discipline than anything else.
Ezra Pound (on poetry)
- Go in fear of abstractions.
- Use either no ornament or good ornament.
- …your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their meaning.
- Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.
- Write the way you talk. Naturally.
- Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
- Check your quotations.
Kurt Vonnegut (on story-writing)
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Write to please just one person.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
- (from somewhere else) Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
(I’m tempted to write everything Vonnegut said, but I’m trying my best not to be woolly-minded.)
- …write just one page for each day, it helps.
- Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper… Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
- …a bad story is only an ineffective story.
Henry Miller (on creative routine)
- Work on one thing at a time until finished.
- Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
- When you can’t create you can work. (Note to self: separate creation from analysis)
- Library for references once a week. (In my case: L.U.E.)
Jack Kerouac (on prose and life)
- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
- Submissive to everything, open, listening
- Be in love with yr life
- Something that you feel will find its own form (YES.)
- Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
- Accept loss forever
- You’re a Genius all the time
(So much for un-woolling, Jack!)
George Orwell (4 motives for creation)
- Sheer egoism
- Aesthetic enthusiasm
- Historical impulse
- Political purpose: “Desire to push the world in a certain direction”
- I think I am ready to learn how to write. Think with words, not with ideas.
- The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader’s heart… The story must strike a nerve — in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head.
- The love of books. My library is an archive of longings.
Susan speaks my heart.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
