Note: this has been updated, 5/17/2010. Lately I kept thinking of what I thought was a quote of Susan Sontag’s from a posthumous essay, and wrote a post about it. Here is the actual quote, supplied by Joshua Benton over at the Harvard Nieman Journalism Labs blog, who read the original post I put up. [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘writing’
February 11, 2010
100 Things About A Novel, Part 3
44. I think of each of them like a visitor from another planet, the sentences being like the circuits to a vast and beautiful machine that communicates the creature. 45. Or a distant relation I’ve never met, from another country and with a language barrier between us. He tries on clothes and wigs I give [...]
January 31, 2010
100 Things About A Novel, Pt. 2
[Note: Part 1 is here.] 25. Novels are hard, not like diamonds but like fate, the choice you make that reveals it was never a choice at all. 26. Then it is the novel as jailer. You in a small dark room with no answers to any of your questions and no one seems to [...]
December 18, 2009
The Mis-Education (Perhaps) of Louis Menand – When to Get Your MFA or Not, part 3
[This is the conclusion, part 3 of a series, When to Get Your MFA. Or Not] There are skeptics as to the value of a MFA in writing, much less the teaching of writing, and some are not where you might think. I remember a few years ago standing in the parking lot outside of [...]
December 6, 2009
When to Get Your MFA. Or Not. [Part 2]
[In last week's installment, I detailed my undoubtedly flawed if also successful plan to apply to MFA programs. This week, how I made my decision to go, and some advice.] Connie’s point, that I would just have to get a job once I got out of the program, made me think, but I had instantly [...]
November 25, 2009
When to Get Your MFA. Or Not.
This came in via email last night from a reader, and I was actually writing a post to address this. Q: I am debating applying to MFA programs but am not sure how worthwhile they are. What made you decide to get your MFA? I’ve heard some complain that MFA’s didn’t improve their writing while [...]
November 6, 2009
Orhan Pamuk Writes By Hand. Hillary Mantel, Before Her Coffee.
The arts section of the WSJ is turning out to be a must-read for writers—kudos to whoever the editor is. This week brings us the writing habits of 11 top authors. I liked this section on the habits of Dan Chaon, who works very differently from me: Dan Chaon writes a first draft on color-coded [...]
