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“Try to See It My Way” (Writers and Negative Capability)

October 13, 2010

Image by Getty Images via @daylife “The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because it is different from his own.” —Leo Stein, American art collector and critic In an 1817 letter to a friend, the poet John Keats describes one of the qualities that makes writers [...]

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Who Is My Audience?

September 29, 2010

Image via Wikipedia Mark Twain claimed that, before he ever published a book, he would “always read the manuscript to a private group of friends, composed as follows: 1. Man and a woman with no sense of humor. 2. Man and a woman with a medium sense of humor. 3. Man and a woman with [...]

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“Our doubts are traitors…” Measure for Measure (I.iv.77)

August 11, 2010

Image via Wikipedia In his collection of journals entitled Confessions of a Barbarian, the twenty-five-year-old Edward Abbey ponders the progress he is making on his first novel: “The novel, my terrible novel, will drive me to ruin…A frightful labor! “And the worth of it, the quality—the problem worries me night and day. At times I’m [...]

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The Pitfalls of “Originality”

July 28, 2010

One of the distinguishing features of modern society is our preoccupation with originality. Giving proper credit to the creator of something is the basis of everything from copyright law and patent offices to anti-plagiarism policies in high schools and universities. Much of this stems from an artist’s desire to get noticed in some way (as [...]

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Know Thyself

July 9, 2010

Recently, a person in my writing group lent me Dorothea Brande’s classic guidebook, Becoming a Writer. First published in 1934, this book is packed with solid advice for anyone wishing to become a novelist. One insightful gem is the idea that, if you want to write great stories dealing with life’s “big ideas”, you must [...]

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