A few months ago, I wrote a short post called “Crimes Against the Humanities” that included a list of appalling assaults on good writing committed in a recently published bestseller. Last week, I finished editing another title in which the English language, common sense, and storytelling itself all took a brutal pummeling. There are two [...]
If you’ve ever read a how-to guide on storytelling, taken a creative writing course, or read a blog post about fiction, then you’ve probably heard the advice “Show, don’t tell.” More than likely, you’ve heard it hundreds of times, as it’s been parroted by countless writing gurus. In fact, this advice is repeated so often [...]
In my post Tough Love for Would-Be Writers, I bitched in passing about hackneyed writing guides offering authors pat advice on how to produce film treatments rather than novels. (More on the latter complaint in my next post: The Case of Show v. Tell.) Despite my earlier rant, though, I do think there are tons [...]
5. When I was eight or nine years old, I became depressed by the realization that for the rest of my life I would never have anyone to talk to except other human beings. I wanted desperately to speak with animals or objects or anyone nonhuman who might have something interesting to say. So I [...]
3. My mother told me unambiguously: “Do not try to take it off the dresser. You’ll only end up breaking it.” “It” was a glass snow globe I’d gotten that same day. Just before bed, my mother let me hold it—but not shake it, for it was too big for my small hands—to see the [...]
While going through some old files this week, I came across a series of vignettes I wrote about ten years ago in the voice of a character called Benjamin Hermes. Each of them has to do with a childhood memory, a little moment of wonderment or loss. Over the next few days I’ll post some [...]
In my last post, I argued that translation involves a form of deep reading that can improve your foreign language skills and your writing. In this post, I discuss a few practical examples as well as how “Translating from the Gibberish” serves as a metaphor for all human experience and expression. (I warned you it [...]
(and Some Tools for Translating…) Les traductions sont comme les femmes. Lorsqu’elles sont belles, elles ne sont pas fidèles, et lorsqu’elles sont fidèles elles ne sont pas belles. —Edmond Jaloux Over the past few weeks, I’ve been translating the catalog of an art exhibition organized by the Fondation Zervos at La Goulotte in Vézelay, France. [...]
It is a truism that everyone can be a writer. Indeed, this optimistic notion seems to explain why bookstores and the Internet are lousy with mediocre media gurus and authors dispensing hackneyed literary wisdom in thousands of books and Web sites on “How to Be a Great Writer.” But is the truism really true? Certainly [...]
