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This week, my reading material has been instruction books about becoming a better writer.
On Monday, I read Anybody Can Write. I highly recommend it, it's not only educational, but fun and hilarious.
After this is posted, I apologize for it being so late, I shall finish the last few pages of The Elements of Style. I just found it the other day too, after it being lost for months. The Elements of Style should go without recommendation, although if you haven't read it, I urge you. You must!
This Week's Theme: Writers
“The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.” - Elia Kazan
“Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair.” - Alfred Kazin
4 comments:
I love the statement from Alfred Kazin!!! This can be so true. When I was teaching those children I can remember the love I felt for being able to help our future get a good start. But the most wonderful part was the love and trust the children would give back with their love of learning. Thank you for this wonderful quote! What a great way to take on a new day with this thought in my mind. You really put a lift into my day! Happy thoughts to you also :)*
@ Claudia: I didn't mention it, but Kazin's quote was my favorite of the three. I relate so strongly, and I also feel the same way about sociology. :)
There was an article I read by a writer that said something of this sort (I paraphrase of course, because I obviously don't have it memorized after a skimmed read from a writer's magazine I don't own):
"It was requested of me that I give recommendations of books aspiring writer's should read on writing. As I was going through all my collection I started becoming overwhelmed, bogged down with what other people wanted to say makes good writing, and I realized that this isn't how you learn to write. It isn't how you find voice, story, or style. And it isn't how you discover how to write a masterpiece. For all of that, you must read the works of the greatest writer's and to study what works for them, line-by-line."
Or I may have a bias against such books. However, there have been many great writer's who have said that you can't teach writing. So many different things work for so many different writer's that it becomes impossible and arrogant to say that one knows how to do it when the only way to do it is to discover it for yourself through writing.
That's my thought on that matter. ;)
@ Shad B.: Not sure how I missed your comment, I sincerely apologize for not replying sooner.
Your points are very good, I have to agree. In a way, this post coincides with that belief. The quotes I posted had to do very much with myself (my style). :)
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