#matt bell

[fawnpalmer]

Everything I Read in January

Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell Hands down the best ~writing craft~ book I’ve ever read. In a sea of books telling me to plot within an inch of my life, to build a third rail and never let go of it (sorry Lisa Cron), Bell tells me to put my pen to fucking paper. To yes, and my way to a draft that barely hangs together. To trust that I really can write my way into my own story. 10/10 pick this shit up even if all you write are grocery lists. 

2. The Monk by Matthew Lewis Picked this up because all my early modernist friends were lapping me in the literacy department and I wanted to read something hard. The Monk does that classic old novel trick where there’s a story nested in a story and one story is about a thousand times more titillating than the other but they both go completely crazy. Think sexy devils and pious maidens and a wild, almost psychedelic descent into madness.

photo not mine bc I listened to this one as an audiobook

3. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner If there’s one thing I love, it’s a sociopathic woman narrator. A writer friend of mine once took a class with Kushner and said she was intense in the sort of unadorned way that really smacks of darkness so maybe she’s writing what she knows! Regardless though, this novel is the platonic ideal of the female rage/ennui novel. Sharp, acerbic, deeply unsexy (in a very sexy way) and just the right amount of topical.

4. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico A short, quick portrait of a couple’s life so full of ennui it becomes a horror story and a real indictment of the sort of cultural malaise that settled in during the end of the 2010’s. I think what makes this book so harrowing is that there are (many) points in it where the life that Latronico is writing seems genuinely appealing. Big monstera plants and good coffee and no moral center. Stuck with me for way longer than I book like this ought to. 

5. Chainsaw Man vol. 1 by Tatsuki Fujimoto This one had me absolutely gasping for air and sad in ways I hadn't felt for a long, long, long time. Bleak and fantastical and somehow so grounded. The main character is so tragic and so funny.

6. Chainsaw Man vol. 2 by Tatsuki Fujimoto A drama populated with the most morally gray motherfuckers I've ever read (except Denji, I love you Denji). I can tell I'm going to be very, very addicted to this series.

[wordshaveteeth]

Remember that your first draft is meant, first and foremost, to be exploratory, playful, and generative, a process of discovery and creation: you are learning what your story is and who your characters are; you are making the materials you’ll need later to revise and rewrite your novel in a better, truer version of itself.

- Matt Bell, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts

[librarycards]

[M]any of the suggestions that confused or overly challenged early readers make (maybe especially in workshop settings) will be requests for more: more backstory, more explanation, more information to help them. But I truly believe very few problems in fiction are solved this way. A profusion of explanation and exposition are more likely to be symptoms of a problem with your novel than a sign of its success, even if they make it more readable: they will reduce difficulty, but not in a way that’s good for the book. If anything, it’s the removal of all challenge that irritates me most as a reader: I hate a writer who hasn’t left me anything to do.

Matt Bell, Managing Difficulty In Fiction [x]

[wrongtitle]

[digitalta]

Surely the earth and the dirt ate the birds too, when at last they grew tired of flying

[quietflorilegium]

"The gap between who a character is and the person they used to be (or are assumed to be) contains a lot of potential power."

Matt Bell, “Refuse to Be Done”

[wordshaveteeth]

The person you’ve become while writing your book is one of novel writing’s best rewards, and that reward is already yours. No one can take it away, no one can add to it. Don’t forget that.

- Matt Bell, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts

[wordshaveteeth]

You may never be able to make yourself do it again if you flinch from it now.

- Matt Bell, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts