Generally, there are few things more tiresome than authors holding forth on writing. There are exceptions, such as this character in Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, talking about the kind of writing he likes:

"I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."

You could do a lot worse than to go by that, I think.

I got that from an also excellent little article on writing by Elmore Leonard, "Easy on the Hooptedoodle."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/books/16LEON.html

That's a great article. Leonard has always been a master of keeping the focus on the characters and not on the author.

Holy mackeral! That is a great article. Thanks for the heads up.

Someone should do game reviews from the perspective of famous writers. Have a little section called: Literary Game Reviews.

That could be fun. Chandler does Max Payne. Poe does Alone in the Dark. Hemingway does (name any hunting game).

Wordslinger


Pa told me the last thing I�d want to be was a no good, shiftless, low-down wordslinger. �Ain�t no life for decent folk,� he said as we made our dusty way home, him leadin� Homer, me tappin� the mule on the rump. �Fine clothes and a sharp wit aside,� Pa continued, �there ain�t no redeemin� thing about scribblin� on a sheet of foolscap. Waste of trees more like it.�

Now Pa weren�t always like that, but the War for Southern Literary Preeminence had changed him. Pa had been with Billy Faulkner back in �62 and, well, it was end of literature as far as he was concerned. �The South ain�t gonna write no more.�

I had dreams, though, of gettin� off this hardscrabble farm. Try my hand at wordslingin�. As green as I was in the professional sense, figure I�d been practicin� long enough on that old Royal Pa thought he�d buried out behind the barn. Yessir, I had a hankerin� to go after them hacks I heard were livin� the high life up north. Some would call me cocky--Pa would�ve cracked me in the head for such suicidal notions--but there were bad writers aplenty to go up against. Especially those who rode the minimalist trail looking for a word or sentence worth killin�. Novelists, they called themselves and, in turn, were called by less appreciative folks: bookslingers, wordists and--worst of all--typists. Figured puttin� them out of their misery would be righteous work. Hope Pa can see his way to forgivin� me . . .

Writing is easy. Writing is one of the most easy and painfree ways to pass the time in all the arts. For example, right now I'm sitting in my rose garden and typing on my new computer. Each rose represents a story, so I'm never at a loss for what to write. I just look deeply into the heart of the rose and read it's story, and write it down, through typing, which I enjoy anyway.

Sometimes it is true that agony visits the head of the writer. At these moments I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be changed, rethought, fiddled with, and of course, ultimately, denied! Painters don't have that luxury. If they go to a coffee shop their paint dries to a hard mass.

... It is always easier to write when you have someone to "bounce" with. This is simply someone to sit in a room with and exchange ideas. It is good if the last name of the person you choose to bounce with is Salinger.

Creating Memorable Characters

Nothing will make your writing soar than a memorable character. If there is a memorable character the reader will keep going back to the book, picking it up, turning it over in his hands, hefting it, and tossing it into the air. Here is an example of the jazzy uplift vivid characters can offer:

"Some guys were standing around, when in came this guy."

You are now on your way to creating a memorable character. You have set him up as being a "guy". And with that comes all the readers idea of what a "guy" is.

-Steve Martin

(don't know what possessed me to do this just now)

What is going on here?

Hey, buddy, don't ask me. I just work here.

-Tom

I kiss you

Steve Martin.. Bah.

Writing is fricken hard. Good writing is almost impossible. Great writing is legendary.

The harder it is to write the easier it is to read.

Jeff

Steve Martin was kidding. For God's sake.

No... Steve Martin has published a book and he is working on another. He takes himself as a serious writer...

For God's sake.

Jeff

Steve Martin has a couple of books, one called Pure Drivel is a compilation of his columns for the New Yorker and a fiction book called Shopgirl, which I've read and found slight bother literally and figuratively (it's actually a novella).

Cruel shoes! Good god man!

Writing, for me is both difficult and easy. When it's flowing right, it's pure bliss--the best kind of high. When it's not, it's the blackest pit of hell.

Overall though, the sustained mental concentration of writing is work. Work I love but work nonetheless.

Test post...

Okay, Asher, I assume that's you posting "Test" all over the place, right??

No, it's someone else. Tim, I believe. He's fixed the forum topic link problem.

Thanks Tim!

For me, the hardest part of writing is getting the stream to flow... once I sit down a get past the 2nd paragraph, somthing clicks and an hour or so later I'm 2000 words into it. Then I realize that hour was really four.

"Steve Martin has published a book and he is working on another. He takes himself as a serious writer... "

The excerpt above about writing was taken from Pure Drivel, and was one of his New Yorker columns, and was most assuredly ironic.

And believe it or not, in spite of yet another breathless, six-word dismissal by a QT3 genius (this time, Steve), they are considered by many people to be rather hilarious.

PS. You can be a serious writer and still be funny.

>>And believe it or not, in spite of yet another breathless, six-word dismissal by a QT3 genius (this time, Steve), they are considered by many people to be rather hilarious.

I was talking about Shopgirl, which unlike Pure Drivel or his New Yorker columns, wasn't particularly funny or serious, or even seriously funny. But that's just my opinion, you mileage may vary. (I realize my sentence above was ambiguous, oh well.)

I highly recommend Pure Drivel (and his older Cruel Shoes). I find it hard to believe that Jshadorf took it seriously, he must've skimmed it? The bit about Salinger and the bit about "the Guy" sort of gives it away. Though I find the painter reference sort of poetic. Anyway, Martin goes on to recommend writing in California, because if you write in Eastern Europe your prose is likely to be morose and sad... and nobody likes that.

(I haven't read Shopgirl - but I've heard good things about Martin's play and I enjoyed him hosting the Oscars)

ASIDE: Steve Martin is an excellent dancer. Pennies from Heaven is under-rated.

There's a book-like printed version of Pure Drivel and an audio version. I recommend the audio version. I have both. The writing may sparkle in the book (and in the too-rare New Yorker column) but Steve Martin himself reading the work lets him use humor techniques like timing and inflection to make his prose really come alive (naturally you may attempt to use those same techniques as you read the print but you shouldn't expect it to be entertaining to anyone nearby). One only wonders what a dramatic video/audio version of the book would be like. Adding facial expressions and body language could make it into something even more funny than it already is! Imagine the banjo and the arrow through his head! Well, you can imagine both those things using the audio or readable versions as well, but you couldn't share it with a loved one.

Alas, there's no banjo in the audio version. But don't let that dissude you! You can always play your own banjo as you listen to him speak.

-Andrew