“Plot is nothing; plot is simply time, a timeline.” – Grace Paley
Originality
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this,… Read more
Novel
“Rules of thumb: 1) Start in the middle of things; begin in motion. 2) Stay in motion by not letting the summary intrude; keep the summary feeding into the scene in hints and driblets, by what Ibsen called the ‘uncovering’ technique.
Memoir
One of the questions about memoir we hear most often at the Amsterdam Writing Workshops is: How much freedom do we have to invent? Is “making things up” in this kind of narrative the same as lying? Consider what the accomplished memoirist Vivian Gornick has to say.
Memoir: Why Has It Become So Popular?
“The first frankly confessional writing in American literature seems to have been F. Scott Fitzgerald’s painfully candid “The Crack-Up.” This is memoir in the guise of self-abnegation and exposure. Fitzgerald was a Catholic, and perhaps it is a Catholic gesture of ‘confession’—in this case openly, lavishly. Then, in the late 1950s and 1960s American poetry… Read more
Lidia Yuknavitch
“Everything that’s ever happened to you is alive inside your body. Your body carries your experiences with you. That ache in your lower back is a story. Where desire ignites on your body is a story. The way you get an eye twitch when you talk or think about certain things is a story. When… Read more
E.L. Konigsburg
Interviewer: Do you have any advice for people who want to be writers? E.L. Konigsburg: I always give one word, and the word is: finish. The word is finish because I think the difference between being a person of talent and being a writer is the ability to apply the seat of your pants to… Read more
Henry James
“James transfigured the novel form, or at least offered it the possibility to be something entirely new. If I were asked to identify the place where he effected this change, I should point to chapter 27 of The Portrait of a Lady—‘obviously the best thing in the book,’ in the author’s opinion— when one night… Read more