A Quote by Harry Crews
I believe some people are just too damn smart to write fiction.
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Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.
There's book smart, there is street smart, there's relationship smart, there's too many different kinds of smarts to know all of them. Everybody doesn't know every kind of smart. There's money smart, there's movie smart, there's computer smart. There's just too many different kinds of smarts for people to know all the smarts.
I have a high range. Sometimes I sound like Stevie Winwood. Some people say I sound like Peter Gabriel. Some of the songs I write are funky. Others are slow. Some are ponderous, and some are there to shock. I must say some are pretty damn good, too.
I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.
I don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.
It is truly excellent to have someone believe in you and your ability to write. But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don't believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world ... write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all those people who are not brave enough to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you.
Some people are faster than others; I'm just figuring it out later, that's all. I'm getting smart too late and old too soon.
I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.
Believe it or not, friendships are difficult to write in fiction. They can easily come across as forced, particularly if they involve too much explication and too many overt gestures of affection.
One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.
It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.
I want people to know about all the kinds of music that I write. Some believe I just write film scores, which is not true.
I mean people up here aren't stupid, I'm lower gene pool and I kind of sit in amazement at watching some of them because they are pretty damn smart.
I want to write some books. Books that have nothing to do with music, just some fiction type of books for a whole different audience of people.
For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.
I remember reading an interview with a writer who said that in nonfiction if you have one lie it sort of messes it up. But in fiction the real details give you so much more credibility, because people do so much research just to write fiction. In fiction you're trying to recreate something lifelike.
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