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Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

Giving Thanks for New York, a Few Weeks Early/Late

Posted in Tangents, tagged , , on November 13, 2010| 5 Comments »

Alright, I know American Thanksgiving is still a couple of weeks away. And of course, my people already had our day of turkey and root vegetables a month back. Still, I’d like to express my gratitude for the time I’ve spent in New York this week – and on all my previous visits, too.

I think I tend to be a fairly practical person, grounded in the here-and-now and not prone to seeing any kind of larger meaning in the happenings around me. But for a long time now I’ve imagined a sort of mystical connection between my writing career and my time in NYC. Whenever I come to visit, it seems, good things happen: I got an email offering me my first ever magazine assignment while I was working at the NYPL during a short visit in May 2008; I flew in on my last airline points for a Restless Legs reading in October 2008, and during the post-event schmoozing an editor offered me a monster writing contract that cleared away my credit card debt and got me out of my mother’s spare room (thanks, Mom!); on every trip here I’ve met writers in person whose work I’ve admired online and in print, and found invaluable inspiration in talking to them at bars, coffee shops, restaurants and the occasional swanky PR event.

New York even manages to clear room in my schedule for those solitary basics I often neglect at home: a rainy afternoon in a coffee shop or a quiet night on the couch, getting caught up on my magazine reading.

Of course, a lot of that good fortune I just described can be attributed to the generosity of the travel writing community here in New York, rather than serendipity. Still, it’s hard to shake the idea that the city is my good luck charm.

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Saul Bellow on ‘Assembling the Dynamite’

Posted in Tangents, tagged , on May 19, 2010| 1 Comment »

The April 26th issue of The New Yorker included a series of letters Bellow wrote to his fellow authors, critics, and other publishing figures – everyone from Philip Roth to William Faulkner to John Cheever. As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t get enough behind-the-scenes glimpses at the writing lives of authors I admire, so naturally I found the letters fascinating. One in particular, though, caught my attention. It’s a 1948 note to David Bazelon, about a recent work of Bellow’s. Here goes:

It took hold of my mind and imagination very deeply but I know that somehow I failed to write it freely, with all the stops out from beginning to end. They were out in a few places. I could name them. And I must admit that in spite of the great amount of energy I brought to the book at certain times, I was at others, for some reason, content to fall back on lesser resources… [T]here is a certain diffidence about me, not very obvious socially, to my own mind, that prevents me from going all out, as you call it. I assemble the dynamite but I am not ready to touch off the fuse. Why? Because I am working toward something and have not yet arrived. I once mentioned to you, I think, that one of the things that made life difficult for me was that I wanted to write before I had sufficient maturity to write as “high” as I wished and so I had a very arduous and painful apprenticeship and still am undergoing it. This journeyman idea has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. It makes me a craftsman – and few writers now are that – but it gives me a refuge from the peril of final accomplishment. “Lord, pardon me, I’m still preparing, not fully a man as yet.” I’m like the young man in the Gospels, or have been till lately. “Give all thou hast and follow me,” says Christ. The young man goes away to think it over and so is lost. There’s a limit to thinking it over…

This idea of holding something back, of having these aspirations for your writing and wanting to wait until you’re really “ready,” until your apprenticeship is over, to tackle them in full, really resonated with me. It’s the sort of thing that crosses my mind every time I dream up another book idea – “I’m still preparing.” At a certain point, I suppose you just have to light the fuse.

Oh, and in case I owe you a World Hum-related email, here’s another relevant line from Bellow: “Forgive my having the manuscript so long. I should have read it at once. But I don’t live right.”

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Wise Words from Jeffrey Tayler

Posted in Tangents, tagged , , on March 4, 2010| 8 Comments »

I wanted to draw attention, briefly, to this essay we published at World Hum last week: Inspiration, Travel Writing and L’Esprit Frondeur. It’s by Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Tayler, and it’s about how he became a writer. I always get a kick out reading the “how I got started” stories of writers I admire, but I especially appreciated this one for making an important and surprisingly regularly overlooked point:

I’d like to clarify something fundamental. I take for granted that if you want to be a writer, you’re a wordsmith, a lover of the classics and a connoisseur of literature. Writers must, initially and throughout their lives, be readers first and foremost, and readers not primarily of journalism, but of the classics, both modern and not-so-modern. I also take for granted that aspiring writers know how to compose a proper declarative sentence and don’t misuse words. Reading the classics will help hone your ear, but there are many good books on usage out there and writers should read and digest them and reread them. Inspiration and an esprit frondeur won’t help aspiring writers who don’t know the basics of their craft. No matter what motivates you, no matter what experiences you have and seek to put down on paper, editors buy well-written words, and your writing has to be exceptional if it is to see print.

In all the talk about building your online brand, social media, and so on, this basic point – that aspiring writers should love words and know how to use them – can sometimes go overlooked. So thanks for the reminder, Jeffrey.

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