On Thursday, I spent several hours reading my friend Andrew's novella and three short stories so I could at least have something to say when we met over breakfast on Friday...it turns out, I had lots to say, and had a little trouble shutting up. Occassionally, I forget I actually learned something in graduate school. While I can't, apparently, apply this knowledge to my own work, I analyze other people's work with at least some minimal coherence.
On Saturday, amid the massive snowstorm, I ended up having dinner with my landlord, who has written some 25 books, including a couple of novels. He kindly gave me a book on writing, Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, copyright 1934. I've only read the first chapter, but what is most interesting to me is how little has changed about the process of writing. Everyone has hangups and stalls and such. Scanning ahead, she does have a chapter on the importance of a typewrite, but if I substitute in computer, I bet it will more or less apply.
Mostly, however, I find that her it is, what, less than a week into this blog, and already, it's becoming what my father refers to a project of "great enthusiasm but limited duration." Art, sure, it's why I get up in the morning. But who cares?
Fine, OK, I do. But that doesn't mean I'm not tired of the short, dark days, of shoveling snow, of accomplishing so damn little, one unfinished project after another. Grumble.
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