Status Updates From How to Write a Sentence: An...

Every writer should read this in my opinion. I already love it and I’m not even finished!

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it /is/ perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided.”

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception.”

“When we write a sentence, we create a world, which is not /the/ world, but the world as it appears within a dimension of assessment.”

And so it is with Woolf’s own writing, which corresponds precisely to her description of the nature of words. They have, she says, a “need of change . . . because the truth they try to catch is many-sided, and they convey it by being themselves many-sided, flashing this way, then that.”

Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One (p. 80). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Currently amazing. Scratches an itch in the most soothing way.

That is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and
manipulated.

Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One (p. 7). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

So good, stoked to come across this in the library.

With a few hundred thousand sentences written so far, and probably double that still to go, I’m due to read this, to refine my understanding of sentence craft.

Already some great suggestions that I’ve practiced and had fun with!

We shall never again be as we were. p123
last line of Henry James
wings of a dove

I know I said at the beginning of this book that it is not the thought that counts, but of course it is, ultimately. p97

perdurability is an illusion....the impressions that make up our experience are momentary and...each of them is " infinitely divisible " into smaller impressions that are themselves infinitely divisible. p59

Content, the communication in a thrilling and effective way of ideas and passions, is finally what sentences are for. p35

You might have a sense of how good it is before you take it apart, but taking it apart will give you an enhanced understanding of just what kind of goodness it performs. p11

Fascinating look at how sentences are constructed plus the opportunity to read lots of wonderful sentences and make connections between them and the success of a larger work.

Very exciting analysis of different styles of sentences.

Very exciting look at language from both a concrete and abstract way. I love the combination of both. I'm actually doing the exercises suggested and learning so much from them.

A fun book if you like writing or care about language and how we use it.

Once again, I'm reading too many books! But this book (which I've had forever) is the kind of book that even reading a page or two at a time is inspiring and makes me want to write more; leads to me actually writing. The examples are awesome.

Reading this for class. Some good advice in here, the writing exercises have given me stuff to think about in my writing.

Have to read this for a summer assignment and so far it's been edifying..

I am re-reading How to Write a Sentence.

I am re-reading How to Write a Sentence.

Edgar Allen Poe writes, of the innumerable effects or impressions of which the heart, the intellect or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, which one shall I, on the present occasion, select? ("The Philosophy of Composition," 1846)

Stanley Fish relays the freedom of structure in a sonnet by William Woodsworth: Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; and students with their pensive citadels.

"Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shake to what would otherwise be inert and dead."

Enjoyed this.

I'm in the mood to read about sentences.

First chapter about how to analyse sentences that enthral you is amazing.

Most of his analysis reads like a guy that just likes to hear himself talk. If this book weren't so short I probably wouldn't bother finishing it.

When he started explaining how to write a sentence like Henry James, I almost threw the book against the wall. Seriously, fuck Henry James.

taking a break from this - too dry.