I think one must trust the writing process. Understand that creativity requires nonlinearity and unique associative combinations. Creative people do a lot of trial and error and rarely know where they are going exactly until they get there.
– Scott Barry Kaufman
Tag: understand
Quotable 474
We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.
– Anne Lamott
Quotable 462
If the reader doesn’t understand what you’re saying, you’re talking to yourself.
– Nigel Hamilton
Pen to Paper: An Appreciation of a Paragraph
This short article is perfectly straightforward: Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, explains his fondness for the first paragraph of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. He makes a pretty good case for it.
This is what writers who want to be better writers do. When we find something so perfect, we dissect it to see what makes it work, so we can then do similar things. This is good practice whether it’s a sentence, a paragraph, a plot, or a character. And unlike dissecting, say, a frog, knowing how the literary thing works doesn’t kill it. Indeed, it may be more alive than before.
So enjoy Dreyer’s examination of Jackson’s paragraph. But before I go, let me share something else of Shirley Jackson’s with you. It’s the entire text of her reply to someone who wrote to savage one of her stories: “If you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree.” Simple, pithy, and, one presumes, effective.
Quotable 266
As insane and stupid and sociopathic as the characters acted, it was always important that their motivations be understandable.
– Josh Lieb, producer, NewsRadio