Stalin

Now there’s a name to make any writer sit up and look over their shoulder. He’s supposed to have coined the unforgettable description that writers are “engineers of the human souls.” Actually it was a minor Soviet novelist in a toast to a writer’s gathering in 1932. No one knows what happened to the man, but he probably vanished into the Gulag ......

John Fowles on writing

Narcissism or pygmalionism is the essential vice the writer must have. Characters (or situations) are like children or lovers: they need constant tending to, caressing, listening to, watching, admiring. All these occupations become tiring for the active participant --- the writer--- and only something akin to love can provide the energy. I’ve heard people say, “I want to write a book.” But wanting to write a book, however ardently, isn’t enough. Even to say, “I want to be possessed by my creations,” isn’t enough, all natural or born writers are possessed, and in the old magical sense, by their imaginations, long before they even begin to think of writing.

Why do we write?

Why do we write knowing that only a miniscule percentage of us will make it to the point of being able to give up our day jobs? Is it compulsion, a few words scratched on the cave wall to mark our passing? Is it the heart-stopping hope that some editor will relent and guide our efforts into print with the words “New York Best Seller List” on the cover of the sequel? Or is it just the pleasure of entering a private world at the end of a long day’s grind? Whatever the reason we know it is worth it, and there is always the chance of that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The lure is strong, but also the spinning of tales is in our blood.

John Updike

John Updike, at the 2006 convention of the American Booksellers Association said, “The printed, bound and paid-for book was – still is, for the moment – more exacting, more demanding, of its producer and consumer both. It is the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following the other’s steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness. Book readers and writers are approaching the condition of holdouts, surly hermits who refuse to come and play in the electronic sunshine of the post-Gutenberg village.”

John Updike, “The End of Authorship,” New York Times Book Review, June 25, 2006

R.L.S.

Seen in a school in Samoa.

“Robert Louis Stevenson, who was born in Scotland, was too delicate to work; instead, he became a writer of books.”

Inkhornism

Inkhornism, apparently in common use from 1400 to 1600, or thereabouts, means a learned or pedantic word or expression. In 1553 Thomas Wilson wrote The Arte of Rhetorique, a work intended to assist budding poets. In it he made fun of exaggerated and overblown language and offered a tour-de-force gibberish example. “I cannot but celebrate and extol your magnifical dexterity above all other, for how could you have adepted such illustrate prerogative and dominical superiority if the fecundity of your engaigne had not been so fertile and wonderful pregnant.”

He sounds as though he was talking about a politician.

St. John Bosco

It seems this St John is the patron saint of editors and publishers, so perhaps we as writers should give him our respect: without editors and publishers, where would we be? No, don’t answer that.