Literary Zinc

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
–Samuel Johnson

Whether it’s literary short stories from one of The O. Henry Prize Stories collections or Cormac McCarthy’s dark but “consistently brilliant” (NY Times) book The Road, it’s important to be reminded what to strive for as a writer who wants to be published and read: a good story, well told.
–Jim

“Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don’t make it out of wood, you must make it out of words.”
–Oliver Wendell Holmes

Interesting statement. Is it the writer’s job to mold words into ideas people can make into mantras for living purposeful lives? Or should writers merely observe and report, leaving conclusions to interpretation? People assign meaning to art. Whether the assigned meaning has anything to do with the artists’ intentions is another question entirely. Does intention really matter? Or is it the art that matters?
–Jim

“The author should be in his work like God is in the universe–present everywhere and visible nowhere.”
–Gustave Flaubert

An intriguing view. One ignored, I suspect, by the authors of many fine works. Art is a personal platform. It can be preached from. Is that always bad?
–Jim

“Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”
–Colette

Very hard to do but critical. Writers often suffer from one of two extreme views: 1. Everything I write is brilliant or 2. Everything I write is crap. Assume the second, then edit your crap into brilliance.
–Jim

“Another piece of advice: when you proofread cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. You have so many modifiers that the reader has trouble understanding and gets worn out. It is comprehensible when I write: ‘The man sat on the grass,’ because it is clear and does not detain one’s attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: ‘The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully.’ The brain can’t grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously. And then one other thing; you are lyrical by nature. The timber of your soul is soft. If you were a composer you would avoid writing marches.”
–Anton Checkhov

This, too, is a hard lesson to learn. We want to “pretty up” our paragraphs. There are fresh, powerful, artful ways to do that. Too many adjectives and adverbs are usually not the answer.

Working on it.

–Jim

“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”
–Ray Bradbury

“Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes wide generalizations. A writer’s not English, Mexican, or American. A writer’s not a woman nor a man. A writer’s not Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, nor snake worshipper. To local standards of right and wrong a writer’s civilly indifferent. In the virtues, a writer’s concerned only with general expediency. A writer doesn’t waste time focusing on fixed moral principles that aren’t yet before the court of conscience. Happiness discloses itself to a writer as the end and purpose of life, and art and love are the only means to a writer’s happiness. A writer is free of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, and politics. To a writer, a continent doesn’t seem long, nor a century wide. And a writer has ever present consciousness that this is a world of…fools and rogues, blind with superstition, tormented with envy, consumed with vanity, selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions, and frothing mad.”
–Ambrose Bierce

“Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly wings and the scraps of torn up love letters.”