Roald Dahl authored dozens of books, including the beloved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach “This boy is an indolent and… Read More »Writer success story – why sometimes you have to tune out the criticism
As a child, I hated horseback riding. I took lessons, though, because my mother wanted me to, and because I was under the impression that… Read More »Why It’s Sometimes Okay to Quit
1. Writers just want to be read. I recently heard a young woman at a party say that writers don’t mind when their books are… Read More »The Copyright Problem: Three Myths That Are Killing Literary Culture
Despite her knowledge of Greek and her voracious reading of the classics, Virginia Woolf considered herself a self-taught reader. As a woman, she had been denied the illustrious Oxford education that the men in her family enjoyed. As it turns out, her lack of affectation, her insistence on taking pleasure in reading, is what makes her essays on literature so lucid, smart, and delicious to read.
Reviewing The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 6: 1933-1941, for the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Benjamin Schwarz notes that, despite Woolf’s place in “the highest stratum of the English intellectual aristocracy,” her essays were written not for the academic but for the common reader, the category in which she rather modestly placed herself. The common reader, she posited, “reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others.”
Here, Schwarz excerpts Woolf’s essay “Hours in a Library”:
A reader must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill…the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading. The true reader is a man of intense curiosity; of ideas; open-minded and communicative, to whom eating is more the nature of brisk exercise in the open wire than of a sheltered study.
For all of her wealth and status–the very condition that allowed her the coveted room of one’s own–Woolf also believed passionatelym Schwarz notes, in the democracy of reading, as evidenced in her essay “The Leaning Tower.”
Literature is no one’s private ground; literature is common ground.
Woolf’s prescription for the survival of literature, which might have ruffled feathers in her time, is no less meaningful today. Literature will survive, she wrote,
if commoners and outsiders like ourselves make that country our own country…teach ourselves how to read and how to write, how to preserve and how to create.Read More »I am the Common Reader: Virginia Woolf on pleasure, reading, & the survival of literature
The first thing you need to know about writing a novel is that there’s no magic formula. Every novel demands its own structure, its own… Read More »How to Write a Novel: 10 Steps to Get You Started
So you’ve written a story, revised it, and are ready to send it out. Here are a few tips for submitting your stories for publication… Read More »How to Submit a Story for Publication
I wanted to share an interesting email I received last week from a reader:
I’m a Marine stationed over at Camp Pendleton in California. While I was on deployment, I found The Year Of Fog in the small ship library…I was a part of an expeditionary unit sitting off the coast of Burma last year after their country was ravaged by a natural disaster. I mean this in the greatest sincerity when I say that reading and finishing your story was truly all I looked forward to the 2 months I spent sitting on a ship, counting the days until I could come home. I’m not sure what it was, but I found myself very sympathetic and attached to the main character. I almost wish the story hadn’t ended. Or at least had ended the way I was expecting. Again, thank you for your story.
A few days ago, a reader named Christine emailed me the following question: Do you think a person can begin being a writer at age 60? You’re so young and have such a solid educational background in literature. I know I want to write, and have a folder of snippets, unrelated, but think I’m crazy to start at this age!
Well, I should admit, first off, that I’m not really that young. I grew up in the South, where a lady is never supposed to reveal her age, but since the publisher of my first novel decided to put my birthdate on the title page, it’s pretty much out there. Matters of youthfulness or lack thereof aside, I get a lot of questions from aspiring writers, frequently about publishing, sometimes of the “I want to write a book, and I’m sure it will be a bestseller if you introduce me to your agent” variety. I found Christine’s question particularly refreshing, because it wasn’t about the business of writing, but the process of writing, and, more specifically, the beginning of writing–you know, that thing you actually have to do before you go out in search of literary fame and fortune. So I thought I’d share my response here:Read More »Yes, Christine, you can begin writing at 60!
Just out today, a new novel by Christopher Barzak, The Love We Share without Knowing. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of… Read More »Good Reads
The iconic short story writer and essayist Grace Paley died yesterday at her home in Vermont. I have long been an admirer of her work,… Read More »In Praise of Grace Paley
