I’m finishing the first draft revisions this weekend. Hey, I’m going to Turkey next weekend (!). So I have to finish it this weekend—personal goal, one of my 2011 resolutions. Whatever it is by this weekend, that’s what it will be–though it’s still a first draft. What is it like? A little bit of Salman [...]
Three years, eight months, and one hundred and twenty thousand words later, the messy first draft of my novel is done! Now to start reading it over. It’s messy, so this is like the alpha or something, like v 0.843. I’ll read it and spend a couple of weeks revising it before even considering it an [...]
via Frank Chimero’s blog: Writing 140 characters is difficult if one is trying to say something with poignancy. It’s hard to tell the truth in a tiny box, because the truth is so big and round and gray. Most things I write are crude and awkward, overly unrelenting, not capable of holding the necessary nuance [...]
Style is a writer’s way of telling the truth. Literary success or failure, by this measure, depends not only on the refinement of words on a page, but in the refinement of a consciousness, what Aristotle called the education of the emotions. –Zadie Smith, “Fail Better“
Beautiful article over on Design Observer about the influential 20th-Century Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. He’s definitely someone my novel’s main character admires, especially when talking about the TWA Terminal of JFK International:
You are going to do this. There is no stopping you. You’ve made your decision, and nothing will stand in your way, God willing. There is no fear. This is a fait accompli. All doubt is merely stage fright, the fear of imperfection. The only way to achieve perfection is through imperfection. You chip that [...]