Alex Jones's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
George Saunders on great (and good) writing
"The difference between a great writer and a good one is the quality of the instantaneous decisions she makes as she works. A line pops into her head. She deletes a phrase. She cuts this section. She inverts the order of two words that have been sitting there in the text for months...
We can reduce all of writing to this; we read a line, have a reaction to it, trust (accept) that reaction, and do something in response, instantanously, by intuition. That's it. Over and over.,,
I like what I like and you like what you like, and art is the place where liking what we like, over and over, is not only allowed but is the essential skill. How emphatically can you like what you like? How long are you willing to work on something, to ensure that every bit of it gets infused with some trace of your radical preference? The choosing, the choosing, that's all we've got."
from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
We can reduce all of writing to this; we read a line, have a reaction to it, trust (accept) that reaction, and do something in response, instantanously, by intuition. That's it. Over and over.,,
I like what I like and you like what you like, and art is the place where liking what we like, over and over, is not only allowed but is the essential skill. How emphatically can you like what you like? How long are you willing to work on something, to ensure that every bit of it gets infused with some trace of your radical preference? The choosing, the choosing, that's all we've got."
from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
