Sunday, November 05, 2006
On writing or the lack of it
The local newspaper in Rochester, The Post Bulletin, had an interesting piece about writing today. Every year over 50,000 people from the US participate in a book writing contest over a couple of months. And surprisingly, most of them manage to get past the minimum word count required. In another section of today's newspaper, children were felicitated for their writing/literary skills. Recently a good friend attended a writers workshop and enjoyed the experience. All of this is heartening news for a person who currently has a block so large it could have been the entire tree !
Anthony Trollope in one of his essays ( the title of which escapes me) opines that a writer always deliberates and plots his stories with care and preparation and that the act of writing itself is laboured. Spontaneity does not play a role and impulse is always put down. I wish that were true for lesser mortals such as I. Most of my writing dashes (such as this one, sitting in the dark on a Sat night with hubby's soft snores providing a constant background) have been a spur-of-the-moment thing. The time spent writing is itself quite pleasurable but that cannot be said of the output. Sometimes, the sheer stupidity or illogical nature of the piece is embarassing and at other times the whole lumpy amalgamation of words can be flushed down ones toilet for being that - waste !
About this piece, I let the few readers of my blog decide while I say to myself "Amateur writers of the world unite - we have nothing to lose but our prose".
The local newspaper in Rochester, The Post Bulletin, had an interesting piece about writing today. Every year over 50,000 people from the US participate in a book writing contest over a couple of months. And surprisingly, most of them manage to get past the minimum word count required. In another section of today's newspaper, children were felicitated for their writing/literary skills. Recently a good friend attended a writers workshop and enjoyed the experience. All of this is heartening news for a person who currently has a block so large it could have been the entire tree !
Anthony Trollope in one of his essays ( the title of which escapes me) opines that a writer always deliberates and plots his stories with care and preparation and that the act of writing itself is laboured. Spontaneity does not play a role and impulse is always put down. I wish that were true for lesser mortals such as I. Most of my writing dashes (such as this one, sitting in the dark on a Sat night with hubby's soft snores providing a constant background) have been a spur-of-the-moment thing. The time spent writing is itself quite pleasurable but that cannot be said of the output. Sometimes, the sheer stupidity or illogical nature of the piece is embarassing and at other times the whole lumpy amalgamation of words can be flushed down ones toilet for being that - waste !
About this piece, I let the few readers of my blog decide while I say to myself "Amateur writers of the world unite - we have nothing to lose but our prose".
