Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 3

Writer’s Desk: It Ain’t Easy, Kids

If he or she can be discouraged by anyone in this world from continuing to write, write, write—then forget it.

Writer’s Desk: Make It Natural

Writing poetry is an unnatural act. It takes great skill to make it seem natural.

Writer’s Desk: Copy from the Masters

Michael Moorcock is among the most prolific and influential British science fiction and fantasy writers of all time. He doesn’t seem to ever get stuck for inspiration. But when Moorcock needs ideas or advice on how to tell a story, he goes to the greats: Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy …

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Writer’s Desk: No Shame in Writing Fast

In his enthralling new biography on William F. Buckley, Sam Tanenhaus says the following about his subject’s approach to his work: Like so many writers he loathed the act of writing, but like very few he did it with speed and efficiency… Buckley spent a career making use of that efficiency. For many years, he …

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Screening Room: ‘Meeting with Pol Pot’

Rithy Panh’s film is hard-hitting yet illusive, much like the story its characters are hunting.

Writer’s Desk: Run With It

Here’s what Kaveh Akbar told Tin House about how he plans out his writing. In short, he doesn’t: I never know where I’m going! I think certainty is death to a poem. The language always knows more than we do… Don’t tell the words what to do. Let things flow.

Writer’s Desk: Sondheim on Quantity

Some people work and work even if nobody else can understand why. Interviewed not long before he passed away in 2021 at the age of 91, Stephen Sondheim talked about productivity: George Bernard Shaw kept writing plays until he was ninety-four. Of course, the last fifteen years they were terrible plays, but he did write them… One …

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Writer’s Desk: Write What You Love

We’ve all had the problem. You read something and it hits you on some level. Still, there is something missing. It has some elements that work but it never quite gets there. You may even think, If I was writing this… Follow that instinct. Listen to the voice of your inner reader. This is what …

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TV Room: ‘Mountainhead’

‘Mountainhead’ Review: Jesse Armstrong’s Acid-Singed Comedy About Modern Wealth and Power

Writer’s Desk: Don DeLillo on Not Wasting Time

Don DeLillo has famously regimented writing habits. Every day at the desk, with two long segments broken up by a run to clear his mind. Not a bad way of going about things, for anybody who has the ability to maintain that kind of 9-5 schedule, but also not the sort of thing that every …

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