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validation
became ‘The Wanderers,’ ” he says.133 After this, he never
It’s a
Wharton always kept a donnée book (a French word meaning the nascent elements of a story) in which she recorded the plot outlines, little one-liners, social critiques, and clever analogies that would someday be used in one of her books.
Newspeak
Poetry is a way of reminding myself to pay attention to language.”
“There were too many books. I mean there was this weight of other people’s opinions around me.”
When she rewrites her own work, she’s doing the same thing, maintaining her own rhythm, giving continuity to her
tone, and perfecting her own deceptively simple sentences.
The notes and letters proved useful, but so did Kerouac’s immaculate memory.
He finally had everything at his disposal for a stable writing life, and he could no longer make the writing happen.
A writer was no good at it after six hours, he firmly believed, and for him the stopping point was the most important moment of the writing day:
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good,” he said. “If you do that you’ll never be stuck . . . That way your subconscious will be working on it all the time, but if you worry about it, your brain will get tired before you start again.”
I write because I know a lot about readers,” he says.
