What’s so hard about writing?
Writing is work. I write despite the fear of being judged, of making a mistake, of losing a loved one. I write despite deciding there’s nothing new left to say, that it’s all been said before.
revisions
Interview! Writer and Publishing Assistant Laura Hart
“I wrote about my dolls. I wrote about the dogs I owned on a video game. I don’t recall a point in time when I consciously thought about the transition from reader-only to reader-writer. It just happened.”
Author Joe Moran on Good Sentences
“Skilled writers…see the sentence as the ur-unit, the granular element that must be got right or nothing will be right.”
Carol Guess on Literary Minimalism
I see much of my work as blocks of text that are made up of sentences, which are made up of words, and each of those words and sentences and blocks of text are modular—I can move them around as I see fit.
Shells
I have been calling it the shell of my book, but when I say the word shell I don’t mean an eggshell, where everything is neat, suspended, and contained within a thin, fragile layer, I mean the other kind of shell. A conch or maybe a broken piece of coral, where the elements can flow in one way and flow out another.
A reminder: always bring movement
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp
Revising That Living and Breathing Thing
Is it crazy that I see each piece as a living and breathing thing with its own identity? That I don’t want to poke it too hard for fear I’ll injure it somehow?
Donna Tallent 