Writers writing about writing. (A writing thread)

[shereads]

James Thurber:

I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going...

I rarely have a very clear idea of where I'm going when I start. Just people and a situation. Then I fool around—writing and rewriting until the stuff gels.

I admire the person who can write it right off. Mencken once said that a person who thinks clearly can write well. But I don't think too clearly—too many thoughts bump into one another. Trains of thought run on a track of the Centeral Nervous System—the New York Central Nervous System, to make it worse.

Still, the act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it.

I often tell them {stories in progress} at parties and places. And I write them there too....I never quite know when I'm not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, 'Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.' She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, 'Is he sick?' 'No,' my wife says, 'he's writing something.'

Don't get it right, get it written.

Your turn.

 

[only_more_so]

There is always the old quote (some say Dorothy Parker said it, but it's unclear):

”I hate writing, but love having written.”

Personally, whenever I write, I don't know all the details that are going to come into the story, but the story knows. I manipulate the large details and largely dictate the theme and the plot, but... At some point writing takes over and I am left watching.

 

[bluebell]

I'd shag him. If he were still alive.

Lovely, Shereads. Thurber rocks.



From His Hawtness, Lord Byron:

"The first thing a young writer must expect, and yet can least of all suffer, is criticism- I did not bear it- a few years, and many changes, have since passed over my head, and my reflections on that subject are attended with regret.
I find, on dispassionate comparison, my own revenge more than the provocation warranted...the best reply to all objections is to write better- and if your enemies will not then do you justice, the world will.
On the other hand, you should not be discouraged- to be opposed is not to be vanquished, though a timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound."


"My work must make its way as well as it can; I know I have everything against me, angry poets and prejudices; but if the poem is a poem, it will surmount these obstacles, and if not, it deserves its fate."


"I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever.
Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?"

 

[shereads]

You'd shag James Thurber?

I couldn't; not with that bloodhound watching us.

 

[slyc_willie]

As regards erotica:

I write when I want, and want when I write.

 

[bluebell]

The 13 Cocks

You'd shag James Thurber?

I couldn't; not with that bloodhound watching us.

So you're telling me this inspires no heat in your nether-region? *grin*

I mean, given the choice, I'd much rather bed Byron, but still- kooky author sex could be quite the delicious entanglement.

 

[rgraham666]

I have no quotes. But I agree with Thurber.

I never know, really, where a story will go or what the characters do.

Writing is an almost unconscious process for me. And I don't want to analyze it much lest I fall prey to Centipede's Dilemma.

 

[shereads]

So you're telling me this inspires no heat in your nether-region? *grin*

That's what I'm telling you.

I might feel differently if Thurber's original draft of "The Secret Sex Life of Walter Mitty" had survived. Sadly, only the opening paragraphs were saved. If you're curious, I posted the surviving portion in Lucifer_Carroll's highly bump-able thread, ""What if they wrote porn?" (Scroll down the page.)

 

[shereads]

I have no quotes. But I agree with Thurber.

I never know, really, where a story will go or what the characters do.

Writing is an almost unconscious process for me. And I don't want to analyze it much lest I fall prey to Centipede's Dilemma.

~ Rob Graham