Zadie Smith on the state of writing

[Grouch]

The author of the much-acclaimed White Teeth (which I have yet to read...spank me!) wrote a wonderful essay in The Guardian on the supposed death of irony in the wake of Sept. 11.

Must-reading for all writers, this is.

Some of my favorite passages:

"We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can."

"So what now? Does anyone want to know the networks behind those seeming simplicities, the paths that lead from September 11 back to Saudi Arabia and Palestine, and then back to Israel, back further to the second world war, back once more to the first? Does anyone care what writers think about that? Does it help? Or shall we sing of love and drawing rooms and earth and children and all that is small and furry and wounded? Must we produce what you want, anyway? I have absolutely no idea."


Happy Inspiration!

[AuntieEmma[$]]

That was a good article.

I hope you don't mind what may turn out to be a bit of a tangent -- but what really jumped out at me was this bit:

I admire the high reverence for the blank page shown by Kafka, Borges and Cortázar. Cortázar ... writes as if every extra word is a sort of sacrilege. The instinct is almost religious, as if to say: and if it is to be stained, proceed slowly and with the utmost care. Which seems the exact opposite of the American/ English instinct: I must cover the world in my shit immediately.

That spoke to me (this is the tangent part) about something I've been having trouble with lately -- the value of advice about writing, the giving and receiving of it, both of which I've done with great enthusiasm, perhaps even obsession, in the past, but find myself drawing away from. The problem for me is that writing advice can seem so universal -- "do X and your writing will be better" (and how sweet it can be to say that or hear that) -- but I'm thinking now that it's really always particular, a way of leading someone towards a specific type of a style and away from others.

For a long time I thought "omit needless words" and all the other Strunk and White-isms enshrined in hundreds of thousands of writing guides -- all the various techniques for generating clear, readable prose -- were the gospel truth. But is clarity itself always the surpeme virtue? Maybe that's a stylistic decision, not a given.

Techniques that would help someone aiming for a kind of exquisite perfection, for "staining" the blank screen (love that image) with only the most worthy of words will be different, maybe even opposite those for someone trying to capture the messiness of experience. And it seems like so much writing advice is given as if one size fits all -- or do you think I'm oversimplifying here?

Anyway, when I was doing workshops and was really into giving/getting writing advice, I used to try (not necessarily successfully) to do the advice-thing in the context of what the other person was trying to achieve, to make their work more of whatever it was they were aiming for, instead of what I might think would be good according to my own taste. I was convinced then that that was possible, even though I'm not so sure now.

But at Epinions, I'm really at a loss. I feel that I don't know what people are trying to achieve. I don't think everyone is aiming for the same thing, but I don't know how to tell what any particular individual is trying to do. So on those rare occasions when someone has asked me for advice, I've kind of stuttered and said things that I think may, in fact, have been spectacularly wrong.

[rich2003dm]

"writers do not write what they want, they write what they can."

It is especially inspiring to hear a real writer express what I've felt since I started writing on Epinions.

I never considered myself to be a writer, nor do I aspire to be one. My time on Epinions has been spent in constant admiration, jealousy even, for the talents of some of the writers on the site.

I envied their command of language, artful turn of phrase, and depth of knowledge, and felt that my work, by comparison , was blatantly amateurish. "I wish I could write like...", has been my constant mantra. "I wish I had said that," has been uttered countless times as I read review after review.

But this single statement has, at minimum, allowed me to feel that, in my own way and for better or for worse, I make my own unique contribution to Epinions. Maybe doing what I can is enough.

Thanks, David. This one made my day.

Rich

[Grouch]

Originally posted by AuntieEmma
The problem for me is that writing advice can seem so universal -- "do X and your writing will be better" (and how sweet it can be to say that or hear that) -- but I'm thinking now that it's really always particular, a way of leading someone towards a specific type of a style and away from others.

For a long time I thought "omit needless words" and all the other Strunk and White-isms enshrined in hundreds of thousands of writing guides -- all the various techniques for generating clear, readable prose -- were the gospel truth. But is clarity itself always the surpeme virtue? Maybe that's a stylistic decision, not a given.

I'm with you all the way on this one, AuntieEmma (why do I hear Dorothy Gale's voice in my head whenever I say your name?).

This is one of the reasons I stopped subscribing to Writer's Digest years ago. It seemed too crowded with advice and blueprints and 10 Easy Rungs on the Ladder of Writing Success stories. Maybe it's the rebel in me, but I've never liked doing what I was told, or "advised," to do. To this day the only "writing instruction manuals" I've read are some essays by Flannery O'Connor and John Gardner.

I'd rather learn by doing. Or, more precisely, filling my head with the words of folks like Dickens, Carver, Flaubert, Irving, Mailer, Updike, O'Connor, DeLillo, Doctorow, Chabon, Hemingway, Faulkner and--someday--Ms. Zadie Smith.