Quotation of the Week: Billy Collins

You don’t read to discover the poet, you read to discover yourself.

--Billy Collins

Source: AdvicetoWriters

Quotation of the Week: Maxwell Perkins

"If you are not discouraged about your writing on a regular basis, you may not be trying hard enough. Any challenging pursuit will encounter frequent patches of frustration. Writing is nothing if not challenging."

--Maxwell Perkins

Source: Chip Scanlan's "'And I Quote': A Collection of Advice, Inspiration and Other Words of Wisdom on the Craft of Writing."

Quotation of the Week: Allegra Goodman

As I mentioned on my other blog awhile back, I've been looking forward to reading Allegra Goodman's new novel, The Cookbook Collector. I pre-ordered a copy and finally began reading on Sunday evening. So far, so great!

Last week, my mom and I attended a terrific literary event here in New York that featured Allegra and novelist Cathleen Schine in conversation with Sandee Brawarsky, book critic for the New York Jewish Week. At one point, Allegra offered the following comment about something that she sees as a real plus of novel-writing:

"Your work can be intensely personal without being autobiographical."

So true! So important! So under-appreciated!

The degree of interest readers show in the autobiographical elements of fiction never fails to amaze me. Admittedly, I've been guilty of this interest as a reader, too. But I hope that my crimes are fewer and further between now that I have some experience as a fiction writer myself.

In truth, there are pieces of "me" in all of my fiction, even if I may be the only one who can pinpoint each of them. And the characters that might outwardly resemble "me"--one example comes to mind from a story workshopped long ago; several classmates told me they were convinced that one character in that story was, in fact, me, thinly disguised--can be the ones furthest from my own experience.

Quotation of the Week: Adam Langer

In an interview occasioned by the recent publication of his latest book, The Thieves of Manhattan (on my tbr list), Adam Langer was asked the following:

"Did you meet with early success, in terms of getting your first novel accepted for publication, or was it a long, hard road for you?"

Langer's response offers this week's "Quotation of the Week":

"If I pretended that my first published novel, Crossing California, was actually the first novel I wrote, I'd say that it was easy. I'd say, yup, I finished the book, got an agent, got a contract, and started work on Book #2. But in saying that, I'd be ignoring the fact that my first novel, Making Tracks, a teen detective story written when I was in high school, is still in a drawer. And so is my second novel, It Takes All Kinds, a 300-page long screed about my first week at Vassar. Also, my third novel, A Rogue in the Limelight, a picaresque journey modeled on Huck Finn and The Confederacy of Dunces, never found the right agent, even though some people (well, my mother) have called it my best novel. One of my earliest agents said that my fourth novel, Indie Jones, a slacker comedy set in Chicago's independent film world, would easily find a home at Doubleday, but that didn't happen. And I stopped looking for an agent for my fifth novel, an existential thriller called American Soil, when I realized there was too much personal shit in it and I really didn't want to deal with having it published. But yeah, once I finished Book #6, it was smooth sailing."

Source: The Huffington Post

(Hat tip to Josh Lambert for the interview link.)

Quotation of the Week: Robert Frost

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."

~Robert Frost

via Heidi Mannan

Quotation of the Week: Elizabeth Hardwick

Since I often sense that I'm plot-challenged (and I was a fan of certain nighttime "soaps" back in the day), I loved this quotation, which I found via Twitter last week.

"If I want a plot I'll watch 'Dallas.'"

- Elizabeth Hardwick (interviewed in 1985)

Source: The Paris Review

Quotation of the Week: E.B. White

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

--E.B. White

Source: @AdvicetoWriters

This one should be taped above my computers at work AND home!

Quotation of the Week: John Grisham

“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care if it’s a hardback, paperback, e-book or library book. Read.”
--John Grisham

Source: Grisham's Commencement speech at the University of North Carolina, quoted by The Book Blog.

Quotation of the Week: Rick Moody

"I'm against schedules. Write when you feel excited by the prospect. Otherwise, don't bother."
--Rick Moody

Source: The Paris Review

What do you think of this one, practicing writers? Kind of goes against a lot of what we've been taught, doesn't it? On the other hand, it does sound wonderfully liberating!

Quotation of the Week: Francoise Sagan

"I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live."
--Françoise Sagan

Source: Quotes4Writers (I imagine that a translator should be credited here, but I have to go with what I've found. As the French say, désolée!)

Quotation of the Week: Maya Angelou

"When the language lends itself to me, when it comes and submits, when it says 'I am yours darling,'—that's the best part."

- Maya Angelou, via The Paris Review (on Twitter)

Quotation of the Week: H.L. Mencken

"There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers."

Source: H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956), via Quotes4Writers

Quotation of the Week: Diane Lockward

Asked to offer suggestions/advice for beginning poets, Diane Lockward recently responded:

"Have patience and persistence. Respect your tears; they are often where the poems reside. Learn the craft. Be willing to serve an apprenticeship. Read the masters to learn where you came from. Read contemporary poetry to learn what’s being done today. Buy books by other poets; that’s one way we support each other. Mark up the books and learn from them. When you ask for a critique, be sure you are not just looking for compliments; otherwise, you won’t grow as a poet."

Source: Diane Lockward, interviewed by Nicelle Davis for The Bees' Knees Blog.

A side note: It's still somewhat difficult for me to address Diane by her first name, since for many years she taught English at my high school (my sister was one of her students!). But it has been lovely to refind her in the world of poets and poetry. You'll find her blog, Blogalicious, linked to the right.

Quotation of the Week: Umberto Eco

"Every translation is a case of negotiation."

Source: Umberto Eco, interviewed for The Paris Review

Quotation of the Week: Cate Marvin

"[S]ome of your best poems may never appear in a journal, and you have to trust your own knowledge that the poem is good despite the fact no one has 'picked it up' (a phrase I hate)."

Source: Cate Marvin, interviewed by Brian Brodeur for How a Poem Happens (via The Writer's Center)

Quotation of the Week: Chang-rae Lee

"'Sometimes students seem shy about writing about people who do the wrong thing -- we're all taught to do the right thing and focus on the right thing,' [Chang-rae] Lee said. 'But all of literature is about people who do the wrong thing, despite themselves. What would the story be if they did the right thing? No story at all. Fiction wants to look at all the things that go wrong.'"

Source: "Acclaimed Novelist Lee Shares Meticulous Writing Approach in Classroom" (via The Book Bench)

Quotation of the Week: Various Journal/Magazine Editors

"I'm sorry."

Such was the response of pretty much every editor who addressed an audience member's question/complaint about slow submission response times during the panel on "The State of the Essay in the Publishing Marketplace" at Welcome Table Press' inaugural symposium, "In Praise of the Essay: Practice & Form," which took place here in NYC last Saturday. (Whew! That is one long sentence I just wrote!)

Quotation of the Week: Saul Bellow

There is much to appreciate in the wonderful collection of Saul Bellow's letters to other writers that the New Yorker has published this week. (You'll need a subscription to access the correspondence online.)

The letters contain a great deal of deep, seriously-considered material. But I couldn't help focusing on one relatively short missive to Philip Roth, dated December 26, 1957.

Roth had evidently sent Bellow an early story, "Expect the Vandals." With a little online digging, I discovered that the story was published in Esquire about a year later, in December 1958. A quick recheck of Roth's literary biography confirms that at the time, he had yet to publish a book (his first, Goodbye, Columbus, was released in 1959).

Which makes Bellow's closing comments to a virtual stranger ("Dear Philip Roth") all the more meaningful:

"Look, try Henry Volkening at 522 Fifth Ave. My agent. A very good one, too. Best of luck. And forgive my having the mss. so long. I should have read it at once. But I don't live right."

Anyone know if Roth followed the recommendation?

Quotation(s) of the Week: Courtesy of Crazyhorse

Received via e-mail yesterday from Crazyhorse journal. Check out the quotations mentioned within, and consider others to send to Crazyhorse!

Crazyhorse Quick-Quote Contest
Do you have a favorite quote about writing, the creative process, or the writing life? E-mail it to Crazyhorse to enter it into the Crazyhorse Quick-Quote Contest.

20 winners receive a free subscription to Crazyhorse.
Winning quotes will featured within the perpetual quote-display box at www.crazyhorsejournal.org and e-mailed to all.

E-mail in quotes by writers, for writers – anything to do with writing. For example:

"That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones."
--Raymond Carver

"The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it."
--Sylvia Plath

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached."
--Franz Kafka

"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."
--Thomas Berger

"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."
--Edgar Allan Poe

E-mail your entry to crazyhorse(at)cofc(dot)edu
subject line: Quote

Enter by midnight, April 17, 2010.

Quotes should be no more than 190 characters (30 words or less).

20 winners receive a free subscription to Crazyhorse.

Winning quotes featured within the perpetual quote-display box at www.crazyhorsejournal.org and e-mailed to all.

One quote per contestant.

Quotes judged by the Crazyhorse Editorial Intern team: we’ll also compile as many entries as we can and e-mail them back for everyone to read.

Quotation of the Week: Steve Almond

People, Twitter is seriously great for discovering nifty, blogworthy quotations. Take this discovery via @The_Rumpus, who found it via @CherylStrayed

"If asking contributors to write for free then collecting 50K is good karma, what’s bad karma?"
--Steve Almond

Source: An e-mail exchange published in The Coachella Review.