Black Ink: Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing

To write a story that works, that moves the reader, is difficult, and most of us can’t do it. Even among those who have done it, it mostly can’t be done. And it can’t be done from a position of total control, of flawless mastery, of simply having an intention and then knowingly executing it. There’s intuition involved, and stretching—trying things

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Make no mistake—writing is power. What this fact should prompt us to ask is: What kind of power is it, where does it come from, and what does it mean? If we take from Aristotle his idea of plot, for example, we should also remember that he believed art relied on slavery: slaves freed their masters to think and create. For the most part, writing has

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