I wanted to hide away and write. I wanted to meet characters who would climb up my pen. I wanted to create a completely new world, inventing everyone and everything.
Entries Tagged as 'writing'
Characters who Climb Up Your Pen – “Twenty fragments of a ravenous youth” – Xiaolu Guo
January 20th, 2012 · No Comments · Description, Writing
Tags:writing
First Drafts – “Twenty fragments of a ravenous youth” – Xiaolu Guo
January 19th, 2012 · No Comments · Quotes, Writing
Have you ever heard this: “Don’t maul, don’t suffer, don’t groan – till the first draft is finished”?’ ‘Who said that?’ ‘Tennessee Williams.’
Tags:writing
Put it in Writing – “The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever” – Philip Gould
January 9th, 2012 · No Comments · Campaigning, Electoralism, Political Communication, Politics, Progressive Politics, UK Labour, United Kingdom, Writing
Central to the War Book and one of my core beliefs is that you must be absolutely honest about your opponent’s strengths, and your own weaknesses, and that you should put them in writing. It is a risk putting sensitive information down on paper, but in my view unless you document hard campaigning truths they [...]
“Why I Write” from “Fifty Orwell Essays” – George Orwell
November 14th, 2011 · No Comments · Culture, Prose, Writing
All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither [...]
Tags:authors·ego·motivation·writers·writing
“Why I Write” from “Fifty Orwell Essays” – George Orwell
November 14th, 2011 · No Comments · Prose, Writing
I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, BURMESE DAYS, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much [...]
“Prevention of Literature” from “Fifty Orwell Essays” – George Orwell
November 13th, 2011 · No Comments · Economics, Ideology, Political Communication, Politics, Progressive Politics, Writing
Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child’s Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.
Tags:dogma·Ideology·Politics·progressive·progressive politics·writing
“Poetry and the Microphone” from “Fifty Orwell Essays” – George Orwell
November 9th, 2011 · No Comments · Description, Poetry, Prose, Writing
This does not matter, because, on the whole, Yeats gets away with it, and if his straining after effect is often irritating, it can also produce phrases (“the chill, footless years”, “the mackerel-crowded seas”) which suddenly overwhelm one like a girl’s face seen across a room. Ooh – I like this similie
Tags:description·phrases·prose·writing
Poetry and the Microphone from “Fifty Orwell Essays” – George Orwell
November 9th, 2011 · No Comments · Culture, Poetry, Writing
One must conclude that though the big public is hostile to POETRY, it is not strongly hostile to VERSE. After all, if rhyme and metre were disliked for their own sakes, neither songs nor dirty limericks could be popular. Poetry is disliked because it is associated with untelligibility, intellectual pretentiousness and a general feeling of [...]
Poetry and the Microphone from “Fifty Orwell Essays” – George Orwell
November 9th, 2011 · No Comments · Culture, Poetry, Writing
I have been speaking as though the whole subject of poetry were embarrassing, almost indecent, as though popularising poetry were essentially a strategic manoeuvre, like getting a dose of medicine down a child’s throat or establishing tolerance for a persecuted sect. But unfortunately that or something like it is the case. There can be no [...]
The Left and the Intelligentsia – “Fifty Orwell Essays” – George Orwell
October 27th, 2011 · No Comments · Communism, Criticism, Culture, Ideology, Politics, Progressive Politics, Writing
Communists and near-Communists had a disproportionately large influence in the literary reviews. It was a time of labels, slogans, and evasions. At the worst moments you were expected to lock yourself up in a constipating little cage of lies; at the best a sort of voluntary censorship (‘Ought I to say this? Is it pro-Fascist?’) [...]
Tags:communism·literature·political correctness·Politics·writing
