Just the Lie

"Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer."

- G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99)

Ah, the good old days: So innocent. Today, it's three lies for one witty turn, and the witty turn is optional.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Writing Straight Out

"I know that if I have been working on one paragraph and I have written it three times, it goes in the bin. Unless it comes straight out, it is wrong, it is awkward, it does not fit."

- Robert Rankin

Forcing sentences and paragraphs makes writing hard work. Easy writing is easy work. Robert Rankin says it well: Writing is right, comfortable, and fits when "it comes straight out."


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Writer's Bite

"All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person."

-Jean Rhys

What? Idiotic to care about the writer? Even though they're damn hard to catch, I want to see the spider that bites me.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Focus

"Words are a lens to focus one's mind. "

- Ayn Rand

Focus on words, see the sentence,
Focus on sentences; see the paragraph,
Focus on paragraphs, miss the story,
Focus small; write big.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Day is Done

"To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all."

- Lord Byron

Writers cannot withdraw themselves from their writings. It doesn't work. Sure we might read a story in which the characters, action, and dialog captivate us for three hundred pages or more, but then we are done. Whether in genre, voice, grammar, punctuation, or style, the writer is there in his story, and then there's the cover. Go to any bookstore and look at the bestsellers. Most titles are small compared to the names of their authors.

Today, Lord Byron's quotation is long out of date; it reads like he wrote it when the earth was still flat. Byron was a poet and, in his defense, readers seek themselves in poetry instead of the poet. In books they seek the story, and that is where they always find the writer. Poets withdraw and writers advance.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Years Yet to Live

"For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word."

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

For your dead writer, nothing is more discouraging than the realization he has years yet to live.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Victory for Life

"Every word written is a victory against death."
- Michel Butor

Every book written is a victory for life.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Live With That

"Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing; for life itself is a writer's love until death."

- Edna Ferber

Even though I believe writing will be my love until death, I wonder. If life cannot defeat a writer, why is it beating the hell out of me? Apparently, I have writing to thank for my survival; I can live with that.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Familiar to Us

"If a reporter doesn't like the person he's writing about, it shows up in his article."
- Willie Stargell

Novelists draw from such a large group of unlikable acquaintances that they never use just one in their writings. Instead, they combine the worst of each into a single character and call the monster, Antagonist. There's no wonder why such characters seem so real to us. Most are.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved

Authors and Lovers

"Authors and Lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free."

- Samuel Johnson

Check that; it's absence, not abstinence.


© 2009, Steven R. Lundin, all rights reserved