writing

When I am writing a novel, I have no responsibility to the subject, only to the reader.

Practice writing plain sentences that contain a grace note, one interesting word that stands out, such as Saramago’s chimera.

Do you have a certain "philosophy of the short story"?

It's not a philosophy but rather a set of instincts or rules of thumb that I can depend on. One of them is that when I'm writing a short story I like to throw characters together into situations that create stress so that as the story goes forward, something in the situation or the characters

you know what you know, and that knowledge will not be shaken out of your stories no matter how breezy or comic or minimalist your mode of expression, or how much you shun mimesis.

Our lives as writers and readers and human beings are best served, then, I think, by an ongoing feeling of humility – taking the “blame” on ourselves, if a piece of writing alludes us, while resolving to keep working at it.

Give the reader a burning question—What happened here? or What’s going to happen now?—and let them investigate with the narrator and add up clues to get to the answer. Ideally your reader solves the mystery at the same time as the protagonist.

he tries to live by writer George Saunders’ advice: “Stop trying to teach the world something and instead refuse to be boring.”

Perhaps the most succinct evidence for the potent magic of written letters is to be found in the ambiguous meaning of our common English word “spell.” As the roman alphabet spread through oral Europe, the Old English word “spell,” which had meant simply to recite a story or tale, took on the new double meaning: on the one hand, it now meant to

What if the special kind of creativity employed by some intuitive people requires belief? In a similar way, possibly, to how positive attitude affects some medical outcomes?