THOMAS WOLFE: FOR THE PURE LOVE OF LANGUAGE
Note: Today is 3 October, the birthday of the very first of my saints, early twentieth-century American author Thomas Wolfe, one of the...
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WITH THIS KEY
"To unlock the heart is to know its secrets, or as close as we may come, to hear its soft inner voice, a thing love alone can achieve,
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THE DARLING BUDS
MY FONDNESS FOR MAY borders on idolatry. I admit that. Her touch is a breeze of sunlight. Her laughter, the pelt of a rose. That it is my...
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AND MUSIC AT THE CLOSE: PARTING WORDS
IN SHAKESPEARE'S RICHARD II, Richard's uncle, "old John of Gaunt," infirm, close to death, makes an observation on the value of parting...
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FOR A PENNY'S WORTH OF HAMLET
IT WAS AN AGE WHEN PLAYS, poems, and letters were written in longhand. The pen was not just metaphor. Try to imagine a slower, more even...
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A CREDO FOR THOSE WHO GRIEVE
IN JANUARY, I posted an article called REFLECTING 17: THE BIG EVENT. True to its title, it looked back on the events of 2017, or at least...
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LIKE ME: A VALENTINE FOR WRITERS
APPLAUSE. THERE IS NOTHING LIKE IT. Even the noblest among us, the most self-assured, modest, and self-deprecating have to admit that....
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I AM LARGE. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES.
SUSAN SARANDON QUOTED HIM more than once in Bull Durham, a film about the great American pastime. He is mentioned with Thomas Wolfe in...
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LETTER TO A YOUNG WRITER
A FEW DAYS AGO, I received an email from a young writer, who, after reading my last post, BLOG TO BOOK: A REPRISE, asked me three...
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BLOG TO BOOK: A REPRISE
WHEN I FIRST PRINTED IT OUT it was close to seven inches deep, a mountain of excess and overreach that would eventually become my first...
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WRITES
WRITES. It is a word that implies, first, an action. He writes. She writes. And so on. If we noun our verb, as Shakespeare was known to...
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WRITE-DIE-OR-GO-NUMB: MY LITERARY SAINTS
THERE ARE REASONS WHY YOU WRITE. Desire. Compulsion. Necessity. The desperate must, as in I must write-die-or-go-numb. All of the above?...
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TRIPPINGLY
I CONSIDERED DRAFTING a post on alliteration, but rethought that strategy. Why draw attention to a device I choose most often to avoid?...
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BE NOT TOO TAME NEITHER
IN ACT 3 of HAMLET, the play, Hamlet the prince offers instruction to a troupe of actors. To paraphrase: Pay attention to words. Don't...
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LADY LIBERTY OWES A DEBT TO MARTIN LUTHER
WITHOUT RELEVANCE, history is little more than entertainment, a benign curiosity. History can be shy about giving up its secrets. It...
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THE SMALL PECULIAR ART OF HAVING, CULTIVATING, AND FINALLY MAKING A POINT
This is, or should be, item #1 in the writer's catechism. The shy, fabulous, satisfying, all-knowing point.
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GETTING THE WRITER OUT OF THE WAY
IF WRITING IS ANYTHING, IT IS A PERFORMANCE. The writer is the lone figure on the stage. A world may watch, judge, applaud, hiss, throw...
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AUTHOR AND FINISHER
The infinite is liberated through the finite, that is, through the absolute completeness of a line.
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AN AURAL FASCINATION
Effective writing is all about fascination—being instructed and fed by it, following where it leads, submitting to its word choices . . .
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CONTENT AND EXECUTION
THE DISCERNING WRITER, the writer who respects his audience and his craft will consider execution with the same weight, or gravity, he...
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