{"id":317,"date":"2007-01-22T18:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scriniary.smallinfinity.net\/blog\/2007\/01\/22\/writing-links-8\/"},"modified":"2007-01-22T18:29:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T22:29:00","slug":"writing-links-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/22\/writing-links-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Links"},"content":{"rendered":"

• Via anghara, tightropegirl on writing what you love instead of what you think you should write<\/a>.<\/p>\n

• Via fairmer, I think , this essay by Zadie Smith in the Guardian on what makes a good writer<\/a>: Writers know that between the platonic ideal of the novel and the actual novel there is always the pesky self – vain, deluded, myopic, cowardly, compromised. That's why writing is the craft that defies craftsmanship: craftsmanship alone will not make a novel great. <\/i> and Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry – we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing – great writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street.<\/i> It rings true and is not encouraging: it is probably easier to learn craftmanship than to learn to express a soul.<\/p>\n

• Via someone, Justine Musk on Why writers should read<\/a>. Musk says she's puzzled at people who say they don't have time to read because they need that time to write. I don't find that statement puzzling at all; just do the math. I don't read nearly as much as I used to (though that's not only because I spend the time writing, and I'm starting to read more again). Having spent 23 years doing a ton of reading and no writing, I figure I can get away with very little reading for a few years. There are a ton of things I'd like to do in my life, but I don't have to do them all at once.<\/p>\n

Though when I say I don't read much, I mean fiction, or nonfiction books. I don't count the daily paper or news on the web. Or nonfiction related to my job, like articles about technical writing or journalism. Or books I don't finish (novels that don't hold my interest, nonfiction books of which I only read a chapter or two). Or magazines. Or the short stories I read on the web….<\/p>\n

• Mur Lafferty's interview with Nancy Kress is a good one<\/a> (podcast)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

• Via anghara, tightropegirl on writing what you love instead of what you think you should write. • Via fairmer, I think , this essay by Zadie Smith in the Guardian on what makes a good writer: Writers know that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}