The Art of Fiction No. 12
Mice: What do you mean by good writing as opposed to bad writing?
Your correspondent: Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be. If he doesn’t know how many people ... See more
Your correspondent: Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be. If he doesn’t know how many people ... See more
Monologue to the Maestro | Esquire | OCTOBER 1935
Writer’s block is a topic of great discussion, especially among young writers and people who think I should write their book for them. I understand being stuck. It can take a very long time to figure something out, and sometimes, no matter how much time you put in, the problem cannot be solved. To put it another way, if it were a complicated math p
... See moreAnn Patchett • This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
“My readers would welcome whatever life style I chose, as long as I made sure each new work was an improvement over the last. And shouldn’t that be my duty—and my top priority—as a novelist?”
Mason Currey • Daily Rituals: How Artists Work
Mais dans le livre imprimé, on ne trouve plus une seule ligne de tout cela, car à peine ai-je mis au propre la première version approximative d’un livre que commence pour moi le travail proprement dit, celui qui consiste à condenser et à composer, un travail dont je n’arrive pas à me satisfaire de version en version. C’est un perpétuel délestage, u
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