NOTED

Scenes that work—for writer and reader

September 1, 2011 | 7 Comments

This post appeared originally in 2010 as “Keys to Conveying Experience” Writing theorist Peter Elbow believes a key to effective writing is getting readers to breathe “experience” into the words. To accomplish this effect, the writer must first have the experience herself. “Narrative,” he observes, “is a way to get your reader’s attention, but it is a rudimentary kind of attention, mere curiosity about what happens next. It doesn’t make her actually build an experience in her head. Narrative is …

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Gail Caldwell 3: more to admire

August 22, 2011 | 8 Comments

I. The way, as I said, that Gail Caldwell employs metaphor in Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship is remarkable. Almost every page includes one. “No, you’re not,” said Caroline, her face as deadpan as a coach’s in a losing season. “No, you’re not. Keep your hands together. Stay still—don’t look at the water, look at your hands. Now look at me.” The voice consoled and instructed long enough for me to straighten into position, and …

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The importance of momentum

August 1, 2011 | 8 Comments

What John Irving told an interviewer at Boston University about the most important quality in novels surely applies to memoirs too. If you’re going to write novels, you need to establish momentum. The longer the novel, the more that momentum is essential. A novel must be more compelling, more urgent, to the reader on page 400 than it was on page 40. Two elements give you this necessary momentum. You must be able to develop characters; the characters must grow, …

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Patricia Hampl: memoir’s excitement

July 24, 2011 | 11 Comments

The big fiction advice is “Show, don’t tell,” but this is not what memoirists are embroidering on their pillows and sleeping on. It’s instead “Show and Tell.” It’s the idea that you can’t tell unless you can show, but you don’t just show. You have to talk about it. You have to somehow reflect upon it. You have to track or respond to it, this thing that’s happening. And in the intersection of these two things is the excitement we …

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Sue Silverman’s call to memoir

July 18, 2011 | One Comment

Everyone has a story.  And all our voices are important.—Sue William Silverman Melissa Hart on her blog Butt to Chair interviews Sue William Silverman about her latest book, Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir. The author of two memoirs, Silverman makes a strong case for a the validity of memoir as a form of confession: We’ve been accused of navel gazing.  The word “confessional” is used in a demeaning way, suggesting that we’re whining or complaining, along those lines. …

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Igniting your need for words

July 3, 2011 | 7 Comments

From Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing: It doesn’t bother me that the word ‘stone’ appears more than thirty times in my third book, or that ‘wind’ and ‘gray’ appear over and over in my poems to the disdain of some reviewers. If I didn’t use them that often I’d be lying about my feelings, and I consider that unforgivable. In fact, most poets write the same poem over and over again. Wallace Stevens …

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Charlotte Roche, Mick Jagger, creativity

June 12, 2011 | 5 Comments

Charlotte Roche introduces her interview with Mick Jagger in German, then talks with him in English. Charlotte Roche is the author of Wetlands, a novel, according to The Guardian, that “makes the Vagina Monologues sound tame,” and which has been a big hit in Europe, especially in Germany, where the author lives. I’d heard about it and how disgusting it is, but hadn’t read it until recently, intrigued by a student’s struggle to review it on campus for a literary …

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