Post by Poetical on Jan 14, 2006 13:44:15 GMT -5
I found this while browsing, just thought it was interesting.
The two great challenges of writing are the things you haven’t written yet and the things you already have.
The not-yet-written material nags the conscience. You fret over all that you haven’t gotten around to including. You have notebooks that stare at you reprovingly. They say: What about us. Yo. Dude. Hey. Remember how you were jazzed about our notations. Remember how you exerted all that effort to excavate all this great material and waste the time of all those sources. We’re waiting. Have you decided you don’t need us, or, as we suspect, have you simply not gotten around to opening us and peeking inside?
So there’s that, the whining and mewling of the Unwritten. We all have unwritten stories, and in some cases, unwritten novels, unwritten poems, unwritten rock operas, unwritten letters to our children to open someday when we’re gone, unwritten bedtime stories we had promised to put down on paper, and so on.
The only good thing you can say about the Unwritten is that it’s not nearly as big a problem as the Already Wrote. Because the Already Wrote is usually terrible. As a professional writer I spend far less time dealing with the Unwritten than I do with the Already Wrote. The Unwritten at least has the potential, in theory, hypothetically, in an ideal universe, to be great; the Already Wrote hasn’t a chance.
The problem with being a serious writer is that you can tell the difference between literature and the stuff you just wrote. The ancient craft known as “rewriting” is similar to triage in a military hospital. There are passages that can be saved, and those beyond hope.
by Marie Gryphon
The two great challenges of writing are the things you haven’t written yet and the things you already have.
The not-yet-written material nags the conscience. You fret over all that you haven’t gotten around to including. You have notebooks that stare at you reprovingly. They say: What about us. Yo. Dude. Hey. Remember how you were jazzed about our notations. Remember how you exerted all that effort to excavate all this great material and waste the time of all those sources. We’re waiting. Have you decided you don’t need us, or, as we suspect, have you simply not gotten around to opening us and peeking inside?
So there’s that, the whining and mewling of the Unwritten. We all have unwritten stories, and in some cases, unwritten novels, unwritten poems, unwritten rock operas, unwritten letters to our children to open someday when we’re gone, unwritten bedtime stories we had promised to put down on paper, and so on.
The only good thing you can say about the Unwritten is that it’s not nearly as big a problem as the Already Wrote. Because the Already Wrote is usually terrible. As a professional writer I spend far less time dealing with the Unwritten than I do with the Already Wrote. The Unwritten at least has the potential, in theory, hypothetically, in an ideal universe, to be great; the Already Wrote hasn’t a chance.
The problem with being a serious writer is that you can tell the difference between literature and the stuff you just wrote. The ancient craft known as “rewriting” is similar to triage in a military hospital. There are passages that can be saved, and those beyond hope.
by Marie Gryphon