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"Writing Wednesdays": An Experiment

I'm going to try something new on Wednesdays from now on, which is to post pieces that are not about tribalism or Afghanistan, but about writing. This is #1.
The subject is professionalism. If you've read my book The War of Art, you know that I view professionalism not only as an asset ...
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Published on July 22, 2009 02:36
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message 1: by Craig (new)
Jul 22, 2009 11:50AM

Craig "I learned something else from this experience–and here is where professionalism comes in. I learned that a writer can be too close to his characters or his story. This is a fatal error. The writer needs distance. He must be at one remove. My prior novels were not real novels. They were self-therapy. That was what made them so excruciating to read. What I was really doing was trying to make myself seem real to myself. I was writing narratives with me as a character to try to convince myself (and the world) that I existed. In other words, I was writing journals. I was writing diaries. I was an amateur."

Damn that sounds familiar. The single best observation I've read this year.




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