Huffington Post recently published an article on the sin of living while poor. It went viral. Despite, as the author puts it, multi-syllabic words it contains. Read it. It is good. A wonderful piece of writing, which makes you feel alive. Enough said.
The world was not shaped by Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, yet we often refer to it as either a brave new world or Orwellian, or, to be diagnostically precise in this predicament, a brave new Orwellian world. Such is the precision of their artistic insight. They described a similar world, of being subjected to control and immersed into solitude, but […]
Richard Wright taught me a word I cannot forget and did not, at first, understand. I am a half-breed, that is. And so was the main protagonist of his semi-autobiographical novel, Black Boy. He wrote the word, and I read it as a kid, and it remained imprinted. Otherwise, we had little in common. Not the citizenship, gender, colour, […]
Writers are often quoted, rightly or wrongly, perhaps because their natural and instinctive job is to tell things beautifully or meaningfully, or in an entertaining way, or with some weight required to be taken seriously. Consider this one, by Tolstoy. “War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it […]
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an American politician, once said that to be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart. All writers come from Ireland. Of some kind. Which is apparent if you replace Irish with writer. This is the greatest and least useful truth about writing. Because it is difficult to be a […]
If writing is something you must do, and cannot abandon, and strive to do well, and want to learn by example, begin by studying the quote uttered by Vivian Mercier. This Irish literary critic once said: “Waiting for Godot has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since […]
If you were born to write, says P.D. James, you can certainly learn it. “Nobody could make me into a musician. Somebody might be able to teach me how to play the piano reasonably well after a lot of effort, but they can’t make a musician out of me and you cannot make a writer, […]
Novelists steal from reality. Because they can. Because they have to. Because they follow their instincts. And because depicting someone else’ s trouble is the easy thing to do. But their observations are always artistically and pragmatically disfigured. Reshaped. Rearranged. Radically remade. Mark Twain explained it as follows: “Most writers regard the truth as their […]
George R.R. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones saga, once said that writing is not a democratic process. Faced with a tremendous success of his saga, he confessed to being inundated with requests of those readers who wanted to write a chapter, change a story line, kill a character, create a character, add […]
I like novels for what they are, and for what they help me unlock in myself, but I have a linear mind and a propensity for contemplation. Some differ and think the novel must be reinvented to survive. Given that it is no longer radical, relevant, adequate, current, or important. They suggest an improved novel. […]
Writing IDs 
Recent Comments