Found 107 posts tagged ‘writing’ |
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Book of Whispers –
September 16, 2015 |
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We hereby present the tightly-guarded secret to finishing a manuscript: "He wrote on to the conclusion." From Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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The Right Word –
September 15, 2015 |
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We checked, and we're pleased that our one and only bit of advice to writers is a Googlewhack. The only other person to have said this is the poet Eric Pankey, in The Journal of the Virginia Writing Project (Winter 2004): " Change all similes to metaphors." A simile, with that pesky word "like," "draws attention to itself as a simile" (which we ourselves say but which we found quoted elsewhere because things sound better when others say them, such as John Bird in Mark Twain and Metaphor, 2007, or, perhaps even better, S. J. Harrison in "Meta-Imagery: Some Self-Reflexive Similes in Latin Epic": "[a simile] draws attention to its own formal status as a comparison").
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Restoring the Lost Sense –
October 29, 2014 |
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| [Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
March 29, 2011 |
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"Writing is just a version of reading." — Geof Huth. . . which reminds us of Hemingway's description of "eyes like inkwells." |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
January 10, 2011 |
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"Writing is just the process of reading backwards, of unpacking from the skull what watching has filled the head with." — Geof Huth--- Daryl Griffiths writes: Via beauty of the timing of this statement I am ordered to intervene. From yesterday it certainly arrives and demands to know what time is it today, while hoping it not be tomorrow.
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The Right Word –
December 26, 2008 |
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"How to establish the exact moment in which a story begins? Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book. Or else the real story is the one that begins ten or a hundred pages further on, and everything that precedes it is only a prologue." — Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (We need not mention how wonderful this book is.) |
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The Right Word –
December 17, 2008 |
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"The more gray and ordinary and undistinguished and commonplace the beginning of this novel is, the more you and the author feel a hint of danger looking over that fraction of 'I' that you have heedlessly invested in the 'I' of a character whose inner history you know nothing about." — Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler
Sixteenth century illustration by Geoffroy Tory. --- Jeff writes: I can relate. How well do we know that other i, really?
Prof. Oddfellow writes: I learned the hard way that the other i's life is dotted with glamorous parties but also secrets and deceptions.
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