Tuesday, March 16, 2004
The world is getting green again, and I'm relieved to see it happening so fast. The dogwoods have bloomed. The clover's back. It's a lot easier to sit here in this office, locked within the unpleasant stories inside my head, if I know there's green out there. If I know that I can get up and go to the window and see something that isn't bleak and dead. The outside should, in this case, not agree with the inside. There should be a distinct misalignment. It's rainy today, but it's a spring rain, and the sun's been showing through every now and then, so that's okay, too.
Hemingway, remember?
More precisely:
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that it all happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer. -- Ernest Hemingway
It goes without saying that I could not have expressed that better myself. Everything you need to know about becoming a writer is contained within that quote. That's all the "how to" anyone will ever need. Well, if you ask me, that is. And I figure that you wouldn't be here, reading this, if you weren't asking me.
I think I've drifted too far afield from the authors who, way back in high school, first gave me a hard shove towards writing. Hemingway. Steinbeck. Faulkner. Those were three of the most important, but it's been years since I've re-read anything by any of them. Perhaps I will begin with A Farewell to Arms, or maybe The Pearl.
Spooky's gone in search of a copy of the new Rasputina CD.
Yesterday, I did another seven pages on the screenplay, Alabaster. So, today I tweak the formatting a little (it'll be a while before I really have the hang of Final Draft), read for typos, and then send the first fourteen pages off to my agent. And try to keep enough time available to keep the screenplay moving ahead. It's taken me forever to get this thing going. I also have to do whatever last-minute things need doing to The Dry Salvages and get that off to Subterranean Press. And there's the Lovecraft essay. And the last story for Thrillers II. And the story I've promised to write for the subculture anthology. And I can't forget to breathe. I was doing that a lot yesterday, forgetting to breathe.
|
|
