Words Unlimited

The Ultimate Guide

"Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts."

An inspiring quote for those who like a physical workout ... but what if you don't like going to the gym? There's more where this came from - it's part of Colin Nissan's The Ultimate Guide To Writing Better Than You Normally Do. See all his guiding words at McSweeney's.

Thanks to Amanda Dalton for sending me the link.

If you were to write your own personal "Ultimate Guide" what would you include?

The Secret Of Writing

Anne Tyler on the secret of writing:

" ... pretend to yourself that no one will see it, ever."

The novel she feels proudest of is Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant. More on her writing life in a long interview from last Saturday's Guardian Review

Fact in Fiction

Fact into fiction is a current preoccupation of mine, it's at the heart of my current work-in-progress. How far can I stray?  I want a nugget of fact - or do I mean 'truth' - in each scene. So I was delighted to come across this quote:

'I’m increasingly interested in the gulf between what is “fictional” and what is “non-fiction.” I have long doubted the word “fiction,” but I’m even more doubtful about what “non-fiction” supposedly represents. Clifford Geertz said that the real is imagined, just as the imagined is real. Who is to say where the lines can be drawn? What is it that we choose to invent? And how does language negotiate that territory?'

It's novelist Colum McCann, from an interview in the New Yorker in which he talks about the process of writing his short story, 'Transatlantic.'

McCann's novel Let The Great Wold Spin is a masterful blend of fact and fiction. I'm currently working my way through McCann's backlist he is so creative with history. 

Read the full interview here.

'Transatlantic' is featured in the 16 April 2012 edition of the New Yorker which you can get from the LRB Bookshop.  

Quote No. 17

"That’s how my novels get written. Small scenes that build and merge, and then you recognize the larger context."

This is Michael Ondaatje from a long and fascinating interview in Bomb 58. Worth reading the whole thing.

Small scenes certainly built and merged in The Cat's Table which, for me, was a stand-out book from my reading last year.

Interesting how this chimes with what Hockney said about creating a large painting.

Quote of The Week No. 16

 “Except by prejudice there is no sentiment in the arts banned from expression and no story that cannot be told. The enchantment is in the feeling and in the telling, and that is all.”

So says the narrator, Mia, in Siri Hustvedt's The Summer Without Men, one of the many books I enjoyed in my long summer break of holidays and celebrations. The quote is a good reminder, as I settle back to writing my novel, that voice and viewpoint is all!

Siri Hustvedt [Mrs Paul Auster, not that that should matter] is a writer I've been circling around, feeling I should read her but never quite manging to. In some ways The Summer Without Men, is a light read but it's also witty, intelligent and thoughtful about love, women across the generations, aging, dying and writing. I'm looking forward to working my way through her backlist.

It seems that The Summer Without Men has been shortlisted for the French literary prize, The Prix Femina. The winner to be announced in the first week of November. 

Quote of The Week No 15

 “At best, the life of the writer, properly understood, is a quest for clarity and understanding in which every fresh start feels like an outrageous gamble against impossible odds.”

From an article in The Observer by Robert McCrum on literary survival.

Quote of The Week No 14

"Doggedness is an essential quality for any novelist"

Says Michael Cunningham, as he reveals how doggedness, kept him going until he found the way to make his award-winning novel, The Hours, work. Read more in this fascinating article, 'Virginia Woolf, my mother and me.'  

Quote of The Week No 13

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."

Seneca

Ancient wisdom worth considering if you're suffering from writer's block.

Quote of The Week No 12

"For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle"

This comes from an article by Mohsin Hamid on why it took him more years than he'd anticipated to solve the puzzle that was to become his bestselling novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Worth reading the whole piece, here.

Quote of The Week No 11

“The great underestimated source of knowledge for writers is school: Latin American history, vertebrate biology, that kind of thing.  In school I studied nearly everything except writing, with degrees in science … I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written. I still do… I’m enough of a biologist to know that whatever comes in will, in some form, come back out.”

This comes from the excellent 'About Writing' section on, American novelist, Barbara Kingsolver's website.

It's worth looking at what else last year's Orange Prize winner has to say - wise words.