If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.
Towse
all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like
what they have written, but I know it's true. If I had a nickel for
every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but
'didn't have time to read,' I could buy myself a pretty good steak
dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read,
you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
-- Stephen King, ON WRITING
--
Sal
Ye olde swarm of links: thousands of links for writers, researchers and
the terminally curious <http://writers.internet-resources.com>
$Zero
> "It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at
> all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like
> what they have written, but I know it's true. If I had a nickel for
> every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but
> 'didn't have time to read,' I could buy myself a pretty good steak
> dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read,
> you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
>
> -- Stephen King, ON WRITING
Gawd.
what utter fucking nonsense.
may i be blunt?
yes, i may.
-$Zero...
and birds. and squirrels. and non-cliche butterflies.
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.writing/msg/40b9b783907bbc9c
Dangerous Bill
> Gawd.
> what utter fucking nonsense.
The mantra of the non-writer --
I can't write because of ______ (someone else's fault), or the less
whiny version, 'life gets in the way.'
DB
$Zero
> On May 11, 5:06 pm, "$Zero" <zeroi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Gawd.
> > what utter fucking nonsense.
>
> The mantra of the non-writer --
if there's one thing i am for certain, it's a successful writer.
there's just no disputing that.
it's pointless silly season to try.
> I can't write because of ______ (someone else's fault), or the
> less whiny version, 'life gets in the way.'
dude, i'm not the one complaining about blank pages.
personally, i've never met a blank page i didn't like.
love, even.
-$Zero...
the best thing about being a writer -- part VIII
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.writing/msg/a89bef4a0435ba49
Ray Haddad
wrote:
>On May 11, 8:50�pm, Dangerous Bill <dangerousb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On May 11, 5:06�pm, "$Zero" <zeroi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Gawd.
>> > what utter fucking nonsense.
>>
>> The mantra of the non-writer --
>
>if there's one thing i am for certain, it's a successful writer.
>
>there's just no disputing that.
Point to it. Anywhere.
--
Ray
serenebabe
> "It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not
> at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like
> what they have written, but I know it's true. If I had a nickel for
> every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but
> 'didn't have time to read,' I could buy myself a pretty good steak
> dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read,
> you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
>
> -- Stephen King, ON WRITING
I agree with that. But, the reading might come in phases. I've been in
such a slump of reading lately -- not making excuses, just saying how
it is -- but I think that when I'm not in the slumps I read SO much it
sort of evens out over time.
I do know when I'm reading more I'm a more interesting person. I think
about more interesting things, that is. That definitely improves my
writing.
I also tend to pick up styles from what I read. Don't mean to, but I
do. Kind of like picking up accents when you're around them for a while.
--
It's All About We! (the column)
http://www.serenebabe.net/
microblogging here: http://micro.serenebabe.net/
Just Me
> "It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at
> all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like
> what they have written, but I know it's true. If I had a nickel for
> every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but
> 'didn't have time to read,' I could buy myself a pretty good steak
> dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read,
> you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
>
> -- Stephen King, ON WRITING
So it was Stephen King who said that. My, my, getting pretty high-
hatted in his old age. What was he doing, googling through some of my
old, most hated MW posts? Glad to see he's on the same "blank
page" (har-har) with me on that, if nothing else.
On BookTV this past weekend was a perfect proof of what he's saying,
in a program that featured two down and out authors, one who was (and
still is) a fully dedicated, highly professional New York City BUM
("homeless person") known--by some-one's arcane sense of irony--as
"Cadillac Man." And the other, a way lower class son of a 13 year old
mother from the projects in Brooklyn, Matthew Goodman, born on the
bathroom floor to the hands of his maternal grandmother, and to a
prose voice so Pimp my Ride, street-wise, that as you see him reading
it, you can't believe your eyes. You think something's wrong, so you
blink. But he's still not Puff Daddy--he's just some Jewish kid, who
looks Italian or maybe even Puerto Rican.
Two styles of prose, different as day and night. Cadillac Man is
white, Irish, and sounds like he's never read much of anything in his
life--aside from the label on a pint of Wild Irish Rose, if otherwise
so much as the newspaper he used for a blanket left by somebody on a
park bench.
Matthew Goodman, despite the piquant vulgarity of the lowest of lower
class Brooklyn argot he was born to; did on the other hand grow up
reading, widely, and ardently enough to develop an ear for the poetry
in real good prose. But an ear so trained can then hear poetry
everywhere, as e.g. in the coarse, ugly, ignorant, grammar-free
cadences of his own tongue; his native, low rent, Housing Projectese--
a language most anyone else would have to unlearn (or have edited out
of him) in order to write--as with Cadillac Man.
The memoir of that professional bum on BookTV is not an album of
pictures; it is NOT something he has the skill--got by reading--to
paint, or compose as an album of songs; his is strictly a story that
comes by one narrative voice, from a story-teller. All people are
story-tellers; you don't need to know how to write, to tell a story.
But the kind of prose that can paint the pictures and people in the
world where the story is set requires that the writer be a reader.
For a writer, words are dabs of color in oil, and you must read to
obtain a palette full enough for the art, or you are not a writer, you
are just any bum on the street; a story-teller, you are "Cadillac
Man."
Matthew Goodman is a white Jewish black kid with a song to sing and
paintings to be hung in the gallery of his generation's life and
times.
Jesus. How did I ever get to be such a pretentiously profound
bastard?
--
JM
http://jpdavid.blogspot.com/
http://bobbisoxsnatchers.blogspot.com
http://vignettes-mackie.blogspot.com
$Zero
you read a how-to manual.
-$Zero...
it's the research.
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.writing/msg/bd3d270364c5a333
Just Me
> > Jesus. How did I ever get to be such a pretentiously profound
> > bastard?
>
> you read a how-to manual.
Hell, are you kidding? I wrote the damn thing.
I'd give you the link at Amazon, but then I'd have to reveal my real
name, and then all hell would break loose and everybody would want my
autograph. They would write me to say stuff like, "How was Sadie Mae
Glutz in bed, Wild Man?" And do you sometimes ever wonder, like--if
only they would have let you be one of the Beach Boys, none of this
would ever have happened?
"Round, Round, Get Around,
I Get Around . . ."
PJ
> "It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at
> all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like
> what they have written, but I know it's true. If I had a nickel for
> every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but
> 'didn't have time to read,' I could buy myself a pretty good steak
> dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read,
> you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
>
> -- Stephen King, ON WRITING
It's on my bookshelf, one of my favorites.
~ ~ ~
PJ
Alan Hope
>if there's one thing i am for certain, it's a successful writer.
>
>there's just no disputing that.
>
>it's pointless silly season to try.
Hmm, let's see.
Nope.
Nobody's bothering.