{"id":2191,"date":"2010-08-12T12:32:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-12T12:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=2191"},"modified":"2010-08-12T12:32:57","modified_gmt":"2010-08-12T12:32:57","slug":"concat-on-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/concat-on-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Concat 3:  On writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For procrastinators among you writing the Great American Novel, here are some links with advice on writing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hilary Mantel [2010]:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/mar\/06\/hilary-mantel-stationery-writers-notebook\" target=\"_blank\">The joys of stationery<\/a>.\u00a0 <em>The Guardian<\/em>, 2010-03-06. On why writers need to keep loose-leaf notebooks.\u00a0 An excerpt:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>That said, le vrai moleskine and its mythology irritate me. Chatwin, Hemingway: has the earth ever held two greater posers? The magic has surely gone out of the little black tablet now that you can buy it everywhere, and in pastel pink, and even get it from Amazon \u2013 if they believe your address exists. The trouble with the Moleskine is that you can&#8217;t easily pick it apart. This may have its advantages for glamorous itinerants, who tend to be of careless habit and do not have my access to self-assembly beech and maple-effect storage solutions \u2013 though, as some cabinets run on castors, I don&#8217;t see what stopped them filing as they travelled. But surely the whole point of a notebook is to pull it apart, and distribute pieces among your various projects? There is a serious issue here. Perforation is vital \u2013 more vital than vodka, more essential to a novel&#8217;s success than a spellchecker and an agent.<br \/>\nI often sense the disappointment when trusting beginners ask me how to go about it, and I tell them it&#8217;s all about ring binders.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Rachel Cusk [2010]: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/jan\/30\/rachel-cusk-teaching-creative-writing\" target=\"_blank\">Can creative writing ever be taught?<\/a> <em>The Guardian<\/em>, 2010-01-30.\u00a0 A moving discussion on teaching creative writing, and the relationship between writing\u00a0 and therapy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.<br \/>\nAt  the start of last term, I asked my students a question: &#8220;How did you  become the person you are?&#8221; They answered in turn, long answers of such  startling candour that the \u00adphotographer who had come in to take a  couple of quick pictures for the \u00aduniversity magazine ended up staying  for the whole session, mesmerised. I had asked them to write down three  or four words before they spoke, each word indicating a formative aspect  of experience, and to tell me what the words were. They were mostly  simple words, such as &#8220;father&#8221; and &#8220;school&#8221; and &#8220;Catherine&#8221;. To me they  represented a regression to the first encounter with language; they  represented a chance to reconfigure the link between the mellifluity of  self and the concreteness of utterance. It felt as though this was a  good thing for even the most accomplished writer to do. Were the  students learning anything? I suppose not exactly. I&#8217;d prefer to think  of it as relearning. Relearning how to write; remembering how.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For procrastinators among you writing the Great American Novel, here are some links with advice on writing: Hilary Mantel [2010]:\u00a0 The joys of stationery.\u00a0 The Guardian, 2010-03-06. On why writers need to keep loose-leaf notebooks.\u00a0 An excerpt: That said, le vrai moleskine and its mythology irritate me. Chatwin, Hemingway: has the earth ever held two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16,26,44,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-concats","category-fiction","category-literature","category-writing","p1","y2010","m08","d12","h12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}