“People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?” PeopleKnowsWritingMayBookSilenceAudienceKnow HowStrangeReaderConversationOneselfStrangerEncountersUnseenWondrousCorrectingAnthropologistsPuzzling Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I'm writing - and I think that this is important for all writers - I'm trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth. I write two lines or three lines. I will immediately stop and turn into a reader instead of a writer, and I'll read those lines as if I had never seen them before and as if I had never written them.” IfsThinkingWritingTryingWellsTwoImportantMightTurnsThreeLinesWrittenReaderPicksStrangerBack And Forth Author:Billy Collins
“If readers like The Thorn and the Blossom, which I would call literary fantasy, I think they would like books such as Elizabeth Hand's Mortal Love, Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen.” IfsThinkingBookHandsHappensGirlFantasyReaderStrangerThings HappenShipsMortalsLinks Author:Theodora Goss
“If you understand writing as primarily engaging an imaginary reader, well, you've kind of been doing that your whole life. You walk into a room and you're engaging with imaginary strangers because you don't actually know who they are. For me, it was really empowering to say: this is a branch of entertainment and communication and engagement, as opposed to jumping over some perceived literary high bar. That was the buzzkill.” IfsKnowsWritingWellsKindWholeWalksRoomsCommunicationReaderEntertainmentStrangerWhole LifeBarsBranchesEmpoweringEngagementImaginaryEngagingJumping Author:George Saunders
“A trouble with poetry is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions. I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry.” ThinkingWayTryingProblemInterestMemoriesTroublePoetBearsReaderPerceptionDifficultyStrangerGrantedPoetry IsMinors Author:Billy Collins