A Quote by Antonya Nelson
I like hearing other writers just about the way they approach writing. It gives me energy for my own work. It's weird; I'm always taking notes about fiction when I'm listening to people talk about craft.
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Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull.
Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.
We talk a lot on 'Biggest Loser' about how fitness is a natural antidepressant, how it burns off stress. What I like about running is that it gives me time alone. I'm always busy, with people at work, with my kids. I love getting out for a run by myself and just listening to my music.
I try to be aware of what I'm concerned about, aware of how I feel about myself in the world, aware of how I feel about the issues of the day, but I guess I don't want to write essays in my head about my craft and maybe it's because I teach and talk about craft of other writers as a reader. I feel the moment I start doing that is when it's going to kill me.
The thing about writing or making art is that I'm not thinking about that stuff while I'm doing it. Like the driver's ed kid, in retrospect I see that that was meaningful, and I felt close to him in that way, but at the time I just thought it was fun to draw, and that's all it was. I think that's what's weird about life and about making art. You have to talk about it later. I guess I should be prepared to talk about it now. That is why I'm here. But again, pass.
I never talk about what I'm writing about currently, never. It's private work on your own, no need or obligation to talk about it. Writers are made into performers these days, including myself, but there are some instances in which I will not perform.
For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
The part of the strangeness of coming back from the war is the way we talk about it. We try to have a discussion about the war that doesn't turn into a discussion about one political side or the other. I wanted to reach out and talk to people about it through fiction, the way a narrative can draw someone in and ask them those questions.
The weird thing for me is I'm sitting there in the '80s writing about the Mutant Control Act and here we are in the second decade of the 21st century with the Patriot Act, listening to presidential candidates talk about building walls to keep people out: who's acceptable and who isn't. It's very creepy.
I'm not really interested in rappers who talk about rap. I don't talk about it, and I don't like listening to other people talk about it. So I stick to the things that I know. You know, things like cars, ultimate fighting. I have a lot of songs about cars, because they're a big part of my lifestyle.
I'm not an intimate of Donald Trump, but I have great instincts about people, and I have fairly good skill at sizing people up, and it's not phony. You can tell when somebody's talking to you and not really hearing you. I've been around powerful people ask me what I think about things, and I can tell they're not really listening. They just asked, to ask, try to score points that way. Trump listens. But you don't get the impression that he's listening from a position of indecisiveness, indecision or confusion. I've never met anybody with the energy this guy's got, either.
The way I build stuff in my mind, it's sort of like a puzzle for me. I always talk about it like, when I'm writing a scene there's a certain feeling I'm trying to create. I'll have my list of scenes and it's more like feelings, these notes I want to hit.
Mostly, I would like people to ask other writers about the craft of their writing so we could learn from one another. We ask movie directors why they chose to use certain lights and angles and speeds of film, but most of the time, we ignore the craft of a writer.
I think that to me, films are personal affairs. It doesn't mean that I am against other people doing things differently, but I'm talking about what I can do. So I don't feel comfortable going to a new city or a certain class of which I don't have sufficient knowledge, doing research on that, and then writing a story about it I don't think I have the ability of presenting other people on screen in that way. It makes me uncomfortable. This doesn't mean that I only want to talk about myself. I want to talk about what I know.
..few writers like other writers' works. The only time they like them is when they are dead or if they have been for a long time. Writers only like to sniff their own turds. I am one of those. I don't even like to talk to writers, look at them or worse, listen to them. And the worst is to drink with them, they slobber all over themselves, really look piteous, look like they are searching for the wing of the mother. I'd rather think about death than about other writers. Far more pleasant.
The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you're a bartender in the tavern of life. Don't get too comfortable and don't really listen to anybody else. Don't stand around with a bunch of writers and talk about writing. You know when you see plumbers at a plumbers convention, usually they're not talking about plumbing: they're talking about whatever it is that two men happen to talk about. They're talking about sports, their wives and children. I just tell my students, don't talk about writing too much, just go out and do it. Find out whatever you need to get to the mainland.
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