Today is the birthday of John Edgar Wideman. I am not familiar with his work. However, because The Writer's Almanac faithfully appears in my email every morning, I seem emphatically more well read than I actually am. I'm always interested in what writers have to say about the process of doing what they do. I'm often given some insight into why I write, because most of the time writing is this odd compulsive thing that I must do, and not just to avoid housework. Although it is quite effective at that. This is what Mr. Wideman has to say about writing. It gave me a little chill.
Good writing is always about things
that are important to you, things that
are scary to you, things that eat you up.
But the writing is a way of not
allowing those things to destroy you.
2 comments:
Hmmmm.....
I get Writers Almanac everyday, too, but let most of them go unopened. Stupid me. But if you're interested, here's a little thing I wrote long ago for probably just such a reason as old John Edgar posited.
http://lostgeneration.com/contest2.htm
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