Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 14
June 23, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Get Out of the Way
Prolific British playwright and screenwriter David Hare (Skylight, The Hours, Straight Line Crazy) sits right at the intersection of acclaimed and popular. (Which, let’s be honest, is where most of us wouldn’t mind being in our careers.) He is both thoughtful and economical, meaning there is a lot he has to teach. Hare’s ten rules …
June 16, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Get It Wrong to Be Right
Last year, playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar—Disgraced, the brilliant Homeland Elegies, the upcoming Robert Downey Jr. AI play McNeal—gave the Whiting Awards keynote address on the theme of what is expected from artists. He talked specifically about one of his mentors, theater director Andre Gregory, and the challenges that success presented. Yes, boo-hoo, every struggling …
June 9, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Create Characters Who Are Nothing Like You
Ayelet Waldman is not the first to note that it doesn’t make sense to only write what you know. But she does put it particularly well here: When writers only write what they know, we end up with lots of short stories and novels about young people falling in love for the first time, often …
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June 2, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Have the Courage to Be Terrible
People like Anne Lamott are asked for advice on how to write all the time. It’s what happens when you inspire people. That’s why it was so refreshing when she asked about what was the worst writing advice she had ever heard: To know what you’re doing in the very beginning of having started something …
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May 26, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Act Like You’re Working
Self-image is important for most people. Writers, being denizens of the mind, sometimes like to think we are above that. But what’s true of everybody else, is just the same with us. Part of gaining the confidence necessary for writing is feeling like you are a writer. That can involve giving yourself pep talks, making …
May 20, 2024
Reader’s Corner: Four New Graphic Novels
A round-up of some great new graphic novels ran in this Sunday’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune: These four graphic novels tell compelling stories, from a girl navigating life’s chaos through horror comics to a compilation of often misunderstood comic strips and from the meta-comedic struggles of a compulsively self-referential novelist to a frank memoir of historical trauma …
May 19, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Make Truth Out of Fantasy
In 1980, Leonard Bernstein gave the commencement speech at Johns Hopkins. He was in the twilight of his career and life. But the composer and teacher still had lessons to deliver: Every artist copes with reality by means of his fantasy. Fantasy, better known as imagination, is his greatest treasure, his basic equipment for life. …
May 12, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Type More Words
The late David Carr was one of the great hires at the New York Times when they were still doing fantastic, deep-dive media journalism. Recovered addict and veteran writer, Carr was a great one for delivering hard-bitten yet inspiring advice. Such as: Keep typing until it turns into writing. No notes.
May 5, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Keep Failing Better
When Paul Auster started publishing his New York City trilogy in the 1980s, he occupied a then-unusual space in American literature. An austere artist of deeply European instincts and a suspicion of the big gesture, he didn’t have the blustering hurly-burly of the 1970s crowd (your Mailers, Bellows, and Roths) and seemed to chart a …
April 29, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Wildcat’
Ethan Hawke’s biopic of Flannery O’Connor, Wildcat, is opening soon in limited release. My review is at Slant Magazine: The O’Connor of Wildcat is a contentious outsider who seems ill at ease in her own skin. Too country Southern and gawky for New York, and too Catholic and idiosyncratic for the hidebound, keeping-up-appearances Protestantism of her native …
