“I usually do at least a dozen drafts and progressively make more-conscious decisions. Because I've always believed stories are closer to poems than novels, I spend a lot of time on the story's larger rhythms, such as sentence and paragraph length, placement of flashbacks and dialogue.” StoriesDecisionNovelConsciousSentencesDialogueRhythmLengthDozenAlways BelieveParagraphPlacementFlashback Author:Ron Rash
“Read like mad. But try to do it analytically - which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.” WritingTryingHardMightNovelFiguresConsciousMadDevicesCompelling Author:Sarah Waters
“But the novels of women were not affected only by the necessarily narrow range of the writer's experience. They showed, at least in the nineteenth century, another characteristic which may be traced to the writer's sex. In Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer's character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman's presence of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.” MayCharacterSexNovelRightsCenturyConsciousRangeCharacteristicsTreatmentAffectedJaneNineteenth CenturyDickensPleadingMiddlemarch Book:Selected essays Source: Selected essays
“Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.” ThinkingMindFirstsHumansLittlesArtSelfPhilosophySocialNaturalPoorNovelStruggleRecordsEnvironmentStylePossibilityCreaturesSolutionsConsciousSpeciesComplexesObviousDrawingImprovementExperimentsInventionAriseInteractionAccurateSelf Conscious Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
“When you write a novel, there’s a level at which you are much more revealing about who you are because you’re less self-conscious about how you’re presenting yourself. You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it’s all coming from you.” WritingSelfLevelsNovelConsciousWho You AreLeavingDnaRevealingSelf ConsciousPresentingPresenting Yourself Author:Elizabeth Gilbert
“We live in a cluttered culture, a culture of information in which even our computers can't tell us what's worth knowing and what is merely cultural scrap. In such a society, we don't have the experience of contemplative space, of the time or mood to engage a book of poetry or even read a novel. Who can achieve the unconscious-conscious state of the reader when everything is stimulation, everything is movement and information?” BookStatesCultureSpaceNovelKnowingAchieveInformationMovementReaderComputerConsciousMoodUnconsciousScrapContemplativeStimulation Author:T.C. Boyle
“Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress.” IfsLittlesWould BeNextIndividualBornChanceNovelEnvironmentCuttingProgressGenerationsConsciousMethodExcellenceEducationalUnconsciousPlasticImitationAdaptationNext GenerationVariationShort Cuts Author:Elsie Clews Parsons
“Writers block: when I get it, it's because my subconscious spotted that I'd make a huge structural mistake in constructing a novel before my conscious mind became aware of it, and threw on the brakes. So I've learned not to sweat it: take two days off, then back up a chapter, read through, and try to work out why I'm suddenly uneasy about continuing.” TryingMindTwoMistakeNovelHugeConsciousWork OutBlockI've LearnedSweatChaptersContinuingSubconsciousTwo DaysUneasyWriter's BlockDays OffBrakeConscious Mind Author:Charles Stross
“I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.” ThinkingWritingFirstsMeanHardFactsMightAsksWaterMy OwnSpaceNovelHard WorkConsciousMetaphorThemeUnconscious Author:Laurie Foos
“I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!” IfsThinkingWayWantWritingYearsDoneLawNovelReaderConsciousImpactHey Author:John Brandon
“I saved letters from my boss. There are things in there that are directly transcribed. I was so glad I did that. Sometimes when I was writing the book I wondered if some little writer hobbit part of my brain was back there puppeteering that action. But it really never, on any conscious level, occurred to me that I would write about it. I will say, I thought probably some day there would be an ancillary character in some novel - not in the one I was currently writing - that would be a dominatrix or something.” IfsWritingLittlesBookSometimesCharacterWould BeActionLevelsBrainNovelConsciousLettersSavedGladBoss Author:Melissa Febos
“I think overtly political novels - those that never transcend or contest their author's conscious intentions and prejudices - are problematic. This is not just true of the innumerable unread books in the socialist realist tradition, but also of novels that carry the burden of conservative ideologies, like Guerrillas, Naipaul's worst book, where the author's disgust for a certain kind of black activist and white liberal is overpowering.” ThinkingKindBookPoliticalCertainBlackWhiteNovelWorstConsciousTraditionPrejudiceIntentionConservativeBurdenIdeologyActivistDisgustingSocialistContestsRealistOverpoweringGuerrillasUnread Books Author:Pankaj Mishra
“It's a complex thing when you're writing a novel, because so much of it is conscious and planned and deliberate, and so much of it is not, and it has to be a dance between the conscious and the unconscious. I bring my best instincts to my work. For instance - and I come by this naturally, or I think I do - I am a very good judge of character.” ThinkingWritingCharacterNovelJudgingConsciousInstinctVery GoodUnconscious Author:Benjamin Alire Saenz