The Scriptor

Write for a living, live for writing.

[thescriptor]

Writer's Block: In and Out of it.

By Adrian Bauza

      I have a confession: 

It's been two months since I stopped working on my novel. 

Apart from corrections, research, edition, structuration, voice design, art design and major planning, the story stays exactly where I left it two months ago. The characters haven't moved or talked since then. The people haven't moved and actions are still in progress. 

Recently, I started writing fiction again, and having ideas for new articles. 

I had a case of writer's block. 

Since you, reader, are also a writer, I encourage you to think about the following.

All over the internet you'll read "writer's block is BS", almost every college professor will tell you the same and all of your peers will say "dude, you're just being lazy". 

Yet, still, no words come out of you. How do they dare to say writer's block is no more than a lie when you're clearly experiencing it? Reasons are diverse, but what they think is not of importance. What really matters is: Why are you not writing?

Because you're waiting for inspiration

Let's be honest here: Can you write (creatively) without inspiration? Yes. Can you write quality material without inspiration? I highly doubt it. There must be something driving your desire to create and simple will is not enough. 

Most, if not all great works of literature have been inspired by events, problematics and ideas that have changed not only the world, but the authors themselves. The story does not need to address the situation directly, propose any change or be relatable, but it does need inspiration. Creativity is fed by external influence, so inspiration is essential.

Despite inspiration being spontaneous, simply waiting for it won't do the trick. One has to look for it. What inspired you to write in first place? Do some research, read about what got you interested in first place, read about related topics. Find material: Movies to watch, books to read, albums to listen, and if possible, go and experience things by yourself. 

Inspiration is particular, for it's structure is usually built before its foundations. A wealth of knowledge is the basis of great inspiration.

Because you don't know what to do next

It happens. You finish a chapter and you don't know where to go next. You start a conversation and you don't know where it leads. Even after the first line, things can seem confusing and knowing where to go or what to do becomes difficult. 

It's not a "beginner's mistake", everyone goes through it, and there's no exact or "easy" way out of it. The first thing to do would be finding out why the story has stopped moving forward, and from there, find a solution. 

If writing were formulaic, giving advice for this situation would be easy. But creating literature is a complex process, and no way is better than other. Analyse it: Would your story benefit from a certain literary device? Is X part really necessary? Is Y character pivotal? What's the message of what you're writing? What techniques do you think will make everything flow better? I could go on, but the only one who knows what questions to ask yourself is no one else but you. 

Writing is a game and it's up to you to solve the puzzle. 

Because you don't feel like writing

You feel your work has the potential, you know there's something you can do to make it progress, yet not a word comes out of you. Unless you have a contract, either as an author, journalist or a columnist, there's no real deadline but the ones you set. When money (or your word) is on the table, there's no other way out, you have to find a way to force yourself to write. But if your work is not due anytime soon, having days when you don't feel like writing is a normal thing. 

In my experience, the best thing to do is to lay it off, relax, consider the reasons why you're not writing and once you come up with a solution, start writing again. But never stop working. 

A writer's job is not only to put words on paper (or a text processor). It goes way beyond that. Writing requires a lot of investigation, conceptualisation, tons of inspiration and planning, et cetera. Not all good works require these things (see Finnegans Wake), but writing requires a holistic approach. 

There are a thousand things you can do for your writing that don't involve writing. Find which one is best for you and do it. 

Because you came to a dead end

You knew what to do, what to write, yet, inevitably, your writing took a course towards a dead end. The dilemma here is not what to do next, because you know there's no "next", but how to end the show (or revise the path in order to make it go on). 

Think about it. Do you really need to keep writing? Much like unnecessary sequels, some extra material can be fun, entertaining and even thought provoking, but it ends up being crap 90% of the time. I know how hard it is to picture your work finished, but remember writing is not the only thing your works need. After edition and corrections, you'll probably see it take shape. Try closing the plot (or leaving it open, whichever you prefer) and see if it works.

Also, edition. Rephrasing and rewording can alter the flow of the story. What once looked like an ending, after edition, may seem like the end of a chapter. The way you use language influences directly the flow of the story. Always keep it in mind. 

If nothing works, take a break. Write other things, experiment. Some works need time to sit and take form, others, you'll realise, aren't worth working on anymore. As painful as it is, it's a sign of maturity to acknowledge it. 

Because you don't feel like going on with this

Even if you have committed for a long time to a certain work, it doesn't automatically mean it's worth continuing. Humans are ever changing. One day you love one thing, the next you hate it. Same happens with literature. 

If you don't feel right working on something, just don't do it. Don't force yourself to write crappy stories when you know that energy you're wasting could be put to use starting new projects or retaking on older ones. You have no obligation to finish what you start just because (unless you have a contract), use your right and freedom to start over, or start another. Whatever you feel it's right. 

You can also take a rest. It happened to me with this blog. Since I never wanted to write daily articles just for the sake of keeping a readership, I took the time I needed for myself and other tasks. If work call you again, you'll feel it, but be sure to always re-read what you have written. It's the best way to check on your motivation.

Or maybe you could take Bolaño's approach. Write 2, 5, 10, 20 things at the same time. Be them stories, poems, articles or experiments. Will it work for you? I don't know, but Roberto was a prolific writer and also internationally recognised. Think about what other heterodox methods could help your writing and apply them.

      Writer's block is a thing, but the scenario is not the same for everyone. Find out why you're not writing and face the beast.

Remember, writing is not always about words coming out of your fingers, but a global experience of research, inspiration and other thousand elements. As long as you're gaining experience and learning, you're doing your work. Finding a way to use those things in practice is another step. 

You may have a reason not to write, but there's no reason not to become a better writer. Go work.

[thescriptor]

What the... Is that a word?: The myths behind word usage and "correctness"

By Adrian Bauza

Recently, I had a discussion with a popular blogger who is fascinated with obscure and charming words. Given their fascination with such subject, I though they'd be open-minded when it comes to actually using any given word, especially made-up words, in creative and even formal communication.

Sadly, I was wrong. The answers given to my inquiries were full of contradictions and animosity, overall adherence to the establishment and rejection of linguistic reasoning. 

The situation left me thinking about my positions, which ultimately led to the simpler, unsolved questions of linguistics: What is the original purpose of language? How did language arise? And most importantly for the case: is there a universal definition of what a word is? This leading to two further questions: When is a word acceptable to be used in X context and what determines its "acceptability"?

I thought about it for days and determined that there's no simple and/or objective answer to said question, and, probably, we'll never answer it, so it's up to us. 

Language is not a static thing. Language is not what resides within textbooks or the rules made by an academy (basically, a group of individuals who speak and write alike). Language is not what you learned from Kindergarten through your senior year of HS. Language is not what you're learning in your Creative Writing or English classes (or any other language classes). Language is a living thing developed by people from the dawn of their existence, and the same development mechanism is still valid and in use. It evolves by use; speaking, writing, and use involves breaking the so-called rules.

How many times have you heard the phrase "that's not a word" or "that's incorrect" (regarding language use)? If you went through school, I can assure you've heard it by the hundreds (albeit not always referring to you), and if you're in college or you're a college graduate, said count goes up exponentially, especially if your field is related to writing. What people don't realise when uttering such affirmation is how wrong they are.

The origin of language has been dubbed by some as "the hardest problem in science". The initial purpose of language isn't clear either. Today we use it for communication among the human species, but, what if language arose at first as some kind of mimicry? What if its focus was local or familial instead of communal or global? Language isn't something that fossilises, so, unless ancient peoples had a way to record themselves, we'll never know how they spoke, but of one thing we're 100% sure: Language changes.

The first account of written language dates back to circa 2900 BC, Sumerian cuneiform characters. Written Old English dates back to 650 AD, Middle English to 1066 and the earliest form of what we know as Modern English dates back to 1470, barely 542 years of history. Words have changed, some got into daily use and some were dropped out. Some were borrowed from other languages, some got shortened, others hyper-corrected. Vowels have shifted, "ain't" came into use, "bain't" fell into desuetude, "Google", "Twitter", "Tumblr" and many other are now everyday words with verbal forms... Then, who are you to say what is and what is not a word?

What makes a word usable? Let's bust some myths and address misconceptions most people seem to have about language. 

"That's not a word"

Play by your own prescriptivist rules for a little and look at the dictionary. What's the definition of word? Here are the first two definitions that pop-up on Google Dictionary:

A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed

A single distinct conceptual unit of language, comprising inflected and variant forms

Given that the universal definition of what a word is is still debated and considered another unsolved problem in linguistics, for practical purposes, let's say a word is just that, the smallest element that can be used in isolation, conveying pragmatic or semantic meaning. Whatever you utter that conveys a meaning, even if you're the only one who knows it at the moment is, by definition, a word. 

"But it's not in the dictionary!" 

Let's get things straight. Language is not what it's written on a dictionary or the rules imposed by some standard. Language is a living thing. The criteria for introduction on a dictionary is, mainly, widespread usage. If a word becomes a word only when it gets into the dictionary, then, does that mean that "cassette tape", "aerodrome" and "VJ" (video-jockey) are no longer valid words? Some (concise, not historic) dictionaries drop words as they become obsolete, but those utterances once were widespread enough to get published. "Mwahaha" got into the OED, "brabble" was dropped. A dictionary is, by no means, a reference on the "correctness" of a word.

"Nobody else knows that word but you, so, thats not a word" 

At first, this seems like a valid point, as it's hard to communicate when only you know what you're saying, yet it's still not valid. I'll tell you why. 

All words were once made-up words. Let's oversimplify things for the sake of easy understanding. The first utterance by one of our ancestors was probably not understood by many (or by no one), yet it still developed and its meaning, whatever it was, became widespread. As words started to arise, new concepts entered the knowledge and vocabulary of the people. Those utterances changed over time and ultimately became the words we all use today.

Some words become others by compounding, inflection and many other ways. They even change meanings radically by a process called semantic change. Take for example the word "awful", which used to mean "wondrous/inspiring wonder" (full of awe) and contrast it with modern usage. See? Those words you take for granted once were very different, and, at some point, only existed inside the mind of the first person who uttered them.

A word is no less of a word because it's made-up. Shakespeare, during his lifetime, coined thousands of expressions and words with no clear etymology. The guy made up words by the thousands, thus setting the basis of what we now know as Modern English. We use English the way we use it now thanks to him and his colossal imagination. If you use words like "bedazzled", "obscene" and "luggage" and support the "that's a made-up word, thus not a word", you better shut the fuck up. 

"But Shakespeare was Shakespeare!"

When they use this argument, basically, you're being belittled because you haven't written and published hundreds of works and set the basis of modern language. Hah! Yes, you're not Shakespeare, but you're no less (or no more) creative than him unless you've exercised your creative abilities enough to know and push your limits. If you come up with a word, that's a word, and there's nothing that prohibits you from making it big.

Words like "muggle" and "mudblood" were once of unknown meaning, and, nowadays, even people outside the Harry Potter fandom know the meaning of these terms. J.K. Rowling started writing ideas for the series on napkins, and now look where she's at and how far her stories have gone. Who says you can't?

"Nobody will understand you"

That's a real concern. There are books that you can't read without having a dictionary available at all times, imagine when it comes to made-up words! While it's true that made-up words are harder to use and harder to be understood because, well, nobody but you knows them yet, many things can make the use of such words viable. 

I once wrote a short story in which one of the characters has a bad case of scoliosis. The fact is known from the start of it and it's mentioned and described multiple times. This is a small excerpt of one paragraph:

Her head crowned a colubrious spine, adorned with a pair of green eyes. Notwithstanding her appearance, she walked instead of slithering(...) 

"Colubrious" isn't a word you'll find in a dictionary, and if you google it you'll find mostly nothing about it. I made it up. It comes from the Latin word "coluber", snake, and to me, it means snake-like. Now, be honest, if you knew said character has scoliosis, isn't the context enough to infer the meaning of it? Voilà! Now you know another (made-up) new word! Use it and spread it if you like it, that's how words become known.

It works a little differently for other words. Let's take for example the famous "sonder", coined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Here's its definition:

Sonder

n. the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Now that's a hard word to use with a complex definition. Is it a word? Yes, definitely. Is its use appropriate? Hell yes. Is it usable? Hardly, but yes.

Let's suppose you use it. You wrote "That afternoon, I got sonder." How do you make your readers aware of its meaning? Simple, there are many ways to do so. You can add a glossary at the end of your book, you can make a call to a footnote where its meaning is explained, you can enrich the paragraph making its meaning inferable by context. I already gave you three options, there are thousands. It's up to you to experiment. 

At times, you could leave words undefined for artistic purposes. That's fine. Is that kind of word less of a word because its creator imbued it with no definite meaning? Nope. As long as it has the potential to stand for something, it's a word, even if it has a different meaning in every idiolect.

"But that's not a serious word! You'll see if you dare to use it in a paper or essay!"

Yes and no. Mostly no. Ask a poli-sci major how many times they've used the terms "blue/red/swing state" academically. Well, before the 2000 election, they meant nothing. Terms and words are being coined every day, if you fail to see that, then I'll assume you live in a cave.

The word "meme", which is known all over the internet, is a term invented by Richard Dawkins in 1976 for his book The Selfish Gene. It's defined as a behaviour that spreads from person to person within a culture. The word may have a Greek root, but it's a made-up word in every sense. It's not only published, but used in serious scientific studies on the fields of biology and anthropology. 

"Quark" was a nonce word used by James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. In 1964, Murray Gell-Mann proposed the Quark model and named the elementary particle after Joyce's word. On the choice of the work, Gell-Mann commented: 

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking-Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature.

Yes, a physicist doing serious work named his model after an once meaningless word. Sure, made-up words mean nothing and thus aren't to be used in any context. Hah! 

I believe it's unnecessary to state the role of made-up words in literature, as it's been clearly defined and described before. As I already mentioned, words are coined every day. If nobody publishes them, then, how are they supposed to become widespread?

"Language is balance between tradition and invention"

The most inane argument I've ever encountered is, without any doubt, this.

Language is not set of clearly established rules or some institution. Language is a living thing. You don't choose to keep a word in use because of its practicality or its usefulness. Culture, circumstances and many other factors render words obsolete, brings some new meanings and creates others, but those are the defining factors. Not an academy, not standards, not your opinion but usage is the only thing that makes language change (or not). 

What you consider tradition probably means nothing to others. Example: for a speaker of AAVE, "you crazy" is tradition, as zero-copula is productive in said dialect, while for some looks "ungrammatical". Who's right? Nobody, as there's no right way to use language.

We must accept language changes, and its mutation is not defined by anyone but its users. It doesn't happen at a regular or controlled pace, it just fucking happens. One day you wake up and you find out that "VHS" is no longer a widely known acronym, that "rewind" has lost most of it connotation. The time passes, the verb "tweet" loses all meaning while other neologisms arise. Nobody plans the disappearance or appearance of a word. Nobody calculates the time from now till we drop all kinds of hyphenation. Nobody decides when contractions are getting rid of their apostrophes. It just happens.

It's time to accept words for what they are, and not for what academics want them to be. Use words as you please. Give them new meanings. Mix them. Create new from old ones. Coin them out of thin air. Revive obsolete words or kill words in use. Use language as you please, for it's intended to be that way.

Linguists have been using SCIENCE for years to show language as it is, the human capacity of acquiring and using complex methods of communication, and not the boring construct academies propose. There's no such thing as "invention and tradition", but a continuum of events that shape the way we express ourselves. 

And if someone says they're a "prescriptive linguist", be wary of that asshole.

[vintageanchorbooks]

Writer’s Digest, 1952

[thescriptor]

Hello December.

When I decided to open this blog, I was looking for a place to talk about literature and writing. To share the joys of writing and reading, my views on them and openly discuss with others. I wanted a place to post about David Foster Wallace and John Burroughs, John Steinbeck and J.K. Rowling. I wanted to talk about the many ways one could write a novel, poetry or essays, discuss them and open a public debate on subjects that are rarely touched nowadays when referencing literature. I wanted to make of this blog the antithesis of most writing advice blogs out there, whose owners are mad about the “only way to write correctly”, prescriptivism (not only linguistic, but creative) and political correctness. 

I did it for a while with the few things I posted. Got positive and negative comments, but most importantly, I started a debate. 

What happened? 

To be honest, It still puzzles me. I was excited, so excited I started writing articles and short essays exclusively for the blog and even got a domain, but halfway through it, I got discouraged and ultimately bored. Time after, I realised what was wrong, or better said, what is wrong. 

From the start, I decided this wouldn’t be an advice blog. Advice would be given on request, and open to debate. I wanted to encourage critical thinking. For some, I did, while for others, I was just being “problematic” and wasn’t posting enough advice. From the few questions I got during the peak activity of this blog, 3/4 of them were from people asking me how to write, and it made me really uncomfortable. I ain’t no arbiter, and definitely no authority when it comes to literature. The real problem is when people start believing such thing exists. 

People talk and think too much about writing, but just a small portion of them are actually writing. They write about writing, but are too fearful of grabbing a pen or start typing and be what they say they are. Writing is not always an easy ride; for some, it can be a painful journey, in spite of that, some carry on til the end. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever make enough impact and have the necessary exposure to change this, but I’ll be lying if I said I’m not willing to try. So here I go. The Scriptor is a thing, again. 

I’d like to finish this by reposting the first thing I wrote here (technically the second). I felt it was valid then, and now I feel it’s more valid than ever:

As much as I hate making lists, some guidelines are necessary for every activity we partake. Fortunately, when it comes to artistic endeavours (or any activity that requires original thinking), lines are way more blurrier. More than a list of dos and don’ts, this one explores conceptions (and misconceptions) about being a writer under the light of truth. Do whatever you want, but be honest, even when lying (creating fiction).  

Who’s right? You are

When we think about writing, what comes to mind? Creativity at its maximum potential? A long and complex ruleset everybody should memorise in order to produce quality material? Complete freedom of creation? Procrastination or work? No matter what your vision of writing may be, you’ll always be wrong(from someone else’s point of view). 

Cause impact

Writing, like any other art, is a matter of perception. Ideas are transmitted via paper or electronically to the reader, who processes the information and then fixes it to the brain’s HDD: memory. Depending on the impact those ideas have on the reader, they will be fixed anywhere from permanently to just a couple of minutes. It doesn’t show how much a person liked your material, but something more important: How good you are translating and spreading your ideas.

Being hated is fine (and being liked too)

Unless your only goal is to be read by millions by penning a bestseller, your writing should not be likable for the sake of being likable. It’s time to face it: a certain set of guidelines will not make you the next John Green, writing YA fiction won’t give you instant money, neither it guarantees your work being read and liked, and the only safe way you have to make money from writing, besides selling your material to mediocre media for a bag of nickels, is retranslating the Bible and writing a new foreword (no one will ever read). Even so, you’ll surely receive strong criticism for “changing the word of God”. Deal breaker? You tell me.

Writing is creating, no matter what

Even for nonfiction writers (and this includes journalists), writing is creating.You know what keeps your friends interested when you’re narrating an anecdote? The way you phrase it, the structure you’re building, the atmosphere you create. Just telling them you got a tattoo isn’t enough to keep them focused. This leads to the next point.

Make food for thought

No matter how uninteresting the backstory may be, a simple fact is never enough. Humans are inquisitive by nature, so, nobody really cares ONLYabout how impressive is you full-body tattoo written in tibetan script. They’ll always ask: Who was the artist? What does it mean? Did it hurt? What are you gonna do with it when you’re old? Questions will always arise, even if they aren’t spoken. You don’t have to answer them all, you don’t have to answer them at all, but when you write something, make sure it’s worthy of thought. Same applies for when you speak, keep that in mind.

Never underestimate yourself 

 You might be an amateur by definition, but never call yourself by that name.You’re a writer. Not an amateur writer, not a so-called writer, and no way on Earth you’re an aspiring writer, the latter is just a poor way to excuse yourself for being inconsistent and lacking dedication. Let them call you amateur, let them call you newbie, but never lower yourself to that point. By the way, have you ever looked up the definition of “amateur”? I bet you’ll stop calling yourself that once you do.

Take advice only as a suggestion. 

You’ll find blogs, magazines, people in general trying to give you advice. Be cautious. Nobody knows what you want to write better than you, even if you don’t. Take advice with a spoonful of salt and really think about it. Does it fit what you’re doing? Are changes really necessary? Only after you’ve answered these questions, apply (or don’t) the advice given to you. Points of view are interesting things because we all have different ones. 

Use your own style

Applies for grammar, orthography and wording, too. Can you imagine Ulyssesafter heavy edition? Removing the confusing parts, “correcting” grammar and language and making it reader friendly. Can you? Edition might get you a few more readers, it can make you famous, but are you willing to sacrifice your work’s integrity? Great works got rejected a million times, look where they are now. Everything is a tool for your own creative development. Even grammer; and puntuaction and syntax, to, OK. Can you imagine The Great Gatsby without Gatsby? Howl with clean language?

Be yourself

You’re not John Green, William Shakespeare or David Foster Wallace. And that’s fucking wonderful.  

[newyorker]

The People’s Republic has sought a Nobel Prize in Literature so avidly and for so long that it became a national psychological fixation—China’s “Nobel complex”.

Evan Osnos on Nobel Prize in Literature-winner, Mo Yan, and China’s “Nobel Complex”: http://nyr.kr/SO0jef

[approachingsignificance]

1984 by George Orwell

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Aesop’s Fables by Aesop

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dubliners by James Joyce

Emma by Jane Austen

Erewhon by Samuel Butler

For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Grimms Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard by Joseph Conrad

Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

Swanns Way by Marcel Proust

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Great Gatsby

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Iliad by Homer

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Odyssey by Homer

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault

The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Duma

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ulysses by James Joyce

Utopia by Sir Thomas More

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

Women In Love by D. H. Lawrence

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

[tetw]

The Complete Essays

The ultimate David Foster Wallace nonfiction collection, including links to every essay available online. (If there are any we missed please let us know).

[thescriptor]

I'm back from my trip

And elections in my country are over. Sadly, not the result that I (and millions of others) was expecting. 

Thank you for sticking up with this project.

[onehundredpillows]

Made a diagram two years ago about banned books for the worst art class ever. Seriously that class was a nightmare. All info given from ala.org.

[newyorker]

In this video, legendary writer Gay Talese gives a tour of his underground office, explains his writing process, and reflects on why he became a “man of record.” Watch the video, and click-through for more on Talese and his “subterranean think tank.”

[writerswritecompany]

Literary Birthday - 30 September

Happy Birthday, Truman Capote, born 30 September 1924, died 25 August 1984

10 Intriguing Truman Capote Quotes On Writing

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say. 

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. 

All literature is gossip

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can’t generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. 

All writing, all art, is an act of faith. 

My preferred pastimes are conversation, reading, travel and writing, in that order.

It’s a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

Truman Capote was an American author, whose short stories, novels, plays, and non-fiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the true crime novel In Cold Blood. At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

Source for Image

From Writers Write

[thescriptor]

Howdy, friendos.

I'm at Florida at the moment, trying to enjoy the first leg of my vacations before heading to NYC this Saturday. In consequence, posting will be sporadic for the rest of the week and the next one. Thank you all for sticking up with this blog, this project and most importantly with me :) I'll be back soon. Bless, -Adrian

[thescriptor]

Today in Literature

September 14, 1920

Uruguayan poet, novelist and journalist Mario Benedetti is born in Paso de los Toros. 

La poesía es especialista en gambetear la censura.

Poetry specialises in capering censorship.

[thescriptor]

Why I Write

By George Orwell

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.

However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’, etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.

When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines fromParadise Lost —

So hee with difficulty and labour hard Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.

which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.

I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:

A happy vicar I might have been Two hundred years ago To preach upon eternal doom And watch my walnuts grow;

But born, alas, in an evil time, I missed that pleasant haven, For the hair has grown on my upper lip And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

And later still the times were good, We were so easy to please, We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep On the bosoms of the trees.

All ignorant we dared to own The joys we now dissemble; The greenfinch on the apple bough Could make my enemies tremble.

But girl's bellies and apricots, Roach in a shaded stream, Horses, ducks in flight at dawn, All these are a dream.

It is forbidden to dream again; We maim our joys or hide them: Horses are made of chromium steel And little fat men shall ride them.

I am the worm who never turned, The eunuch without a harem; Between the priest and the commissar I walk like Eugene Aram;

And the commissar is telling my fortune While the radio plays, But the priest has promised an Austin Seven, For Duggie always pays.

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls, And woke to find it true; I wasn't born for an age like this; Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.

It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.

In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

1946

THE END

[vintageanchorbooks]

H. L. Mencken, Baltimore newspaperman, critic, and famous curmudgeon, was born today in 1880 (he died in 1956). Some great Mencken quotations…

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepare to see them misunderstood.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe… Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

 “It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”

“It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepare to see them misunderstood.

[thescriptor]

Hosted by the Harry Ransom Center of The University of Texas at Austin

A small but significant portion of the David Foster Wallace archive represents his teaching career, from his graduate school years through to his work as a faculty member at Pomona College in the years before his death. Wallace not only had high expectations for his students, but took his own role as a teacher very seriously. Syllabi, paper topic handouts, quizzes, vocabulary lists, heavily annotated teaching texts, and other documents dating from the late 1980s to 2008 are represented in the collection. Shown here are assignments and books representing various periods in his teaching career.

[thescriptor]

Today in Literature

September 12, 2008

David Foster Wallace is found dead in Claremont, CA.

Wallace committed suicide by hanging.

He was 46.

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flame yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling. 

                                                                                                       -Infinite Jest

You are missed.