on writing - from Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut

I've been reading Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, edited by
William Rodney Allen.  Here are a few tidbits, Vonnegut's
thoughts on writing, short stories, and so on, that I rarely see on
other websites spouting bits of his wisdom...  Enjoy...

"As a rule it takes me quite awhile to figure out precisely how the
novel will end… I find that, as a writer, I share a problem, perhaps
you could call it a tragedy, with most human beings: a tendency to
lose contact with my own intelligence.  It's almost as if there were a
layer of fat upon the part of us that thinks and it's the writer's job to
hack through and discover what is inside.  So often it's this belief, or
some such belief, that keeps me going after a day when I've been at
it for hours and am dissatisfied with what I've produced.  But I do
keep at it and, if I'm patient, a nice egg-shaped idea emerges and I
can tell my intelligence has gotten through.  It' a slow process,
though, and an annoying one, because you have to sit still so long."

"That's the horrible part of being in the short-story business - you
have to be a real expert on ends.  Nothing in real life ends."

"Usually what you do is you obsess the reader: Is the boy going to
get the girl?  Is the person going to get revenge, or, are they going
to find the money, whatever.  Once you get bogged down in plot,
on rails like that, that's all a reader can think about."

By Klas Fahlén

on reading - j.k. rowling

If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.

- J.K. Rowling

illustration - aris moore

I've been reading some horror and dark fantasy short fiction lately,
and then I came across the work of Aris Moore, which struck me as
perfectly dark and subtly horrifying, its cutting, absurd mood the
same as some of the stories I've been reading.  Check it out and have
a go at some darker kinds of writing...

And if you want something to read, check out Lisa Tuttle's "Objects
in Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear," which is very creepy
..found in the House of Fear anthology and The Year's Best Dark 
Fantasy & Horror 2012.

a dreamer's wisdom - amelia barr

No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often
be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.

- Amelia Barr

By Eine Der Guten

on words - mark twain

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is
really a large matter—if's the difference between the lightning bug
and the lightning.

- Mark Twain

on writing - lorrie moore

I just read an interview The Paris Review did with Lorrie Moore.
Here are some highlights referencing art, inspiration, writing short
stories versus novels, but the whole thing was great and should be
read in its entirety...  here.

"Certainly bitter emotions can fuel art—all kinds of emotions do. But
one is probably best left assembling a narrative in a state of dispassion;
the passion is, paradoxically, better communicated that way."

"One has to imagine, one has to create (exaggerate, lie, fabricate from
whole cloth and patch together from remnants), or the [story] will not
come alive as art. Of course, what one is interested in writing about
often comes from what one has remarked in one’s immediate world
or what one has experienced oneself or perhaps what one’s friends
have experienced. But one takes these observations, feelings, memories,
anecdotes—whatever—and goes on an imaginative journey with them.
What one hopes to do in that journey is to imagine deeply and well and
thereby somehow both gather and mine the best stuff of the world. A
story is a kind of biopsy of human life. A story is both local, specific,
small, and deep, in a kind of penetrating, layered, and revealing way."

By Adrian Bellesguard

on writing - robert southey

Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams, the more they
are condensed the deeper they burn.

- Robert Southey, poet

By Violet May