Some quotes from Walter Mosley...

[fajrdrako]

The instinctive method of writing is random in appearance, but that is not to say it is less ordered. Discovering knowledge from your well of unconscious information looks sloppy, but we must always remember that there are no straight lines in the chaos of our hidden minds.

Stories are often lies. More often, they are only partial truths.

Perhaps you were looking for an epiphany, and all you found was a joke.

Poetry is the fount of all writing.

These are all from his book This Year You Write Your Novel. Don't get too excited by these good quotes; he is also capable of writing an abomination like He will have to overcome the terror wrought upon him by the land pirates who decimated so many lives. I can't even begin to guess what he thinks "decimated" means!

Comments

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I like the first quote, a lot, because it rings so true. My writing is usually plot driven, but I tend to find that I have to get halfway through before I know where the plot's actually going. I start with a line of dialogue or a snapshot scene and build from there.

The moment it comes together or the twist untangles or I know 'whodunnit' is such a wonderful moment that I always wonder how I didn't know it before. It's often when I'm walking too or from work and I'm sure there are lots of people who get to work, sit down and say "there was this strange girl on the way here, bouncing along the street talking to herself."

Of course, then I usually have to go back and re-write everything so it fits, but that's okay :)

Oh, and 'decimated so many lies'? He must be related to whoever wrote the management articles I'm reading at the moment...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I agree about the first quote - I find it's the most effective way to write. I generally know where I'm going, but - it's a question of how to get there.

It's often when I'm walking too or from work and I'm sure there are lots of people who get to work, sit down and say "there was this strange girl on the way here, bouncing along the street talking to herself."

Me too! And sometimes my friends see it and comment to me - "Saw you in the street the other day, you were grinning about something." I never explain!

Rewriting is the most important part of all. And then doing it again.

Somewhere in his odds and ends of writing advice, Mosley says that if you make a random mistake - whether it's English usage or something factual - it will taint the reading of the person who reads it for the rest of the book. Which makes every sentence important. Then he puts in a clunker like that as an example of good writing!

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

It's like when you leave someone a post correcting their grammar and it's got a typo in the middle of it. These things are meant to keep us humble ;)

I'm rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting) at the moment, which I'm sure is because I know what's going on - I get much more excited about a story when I don't know the ending, but have a tendency to get bored when I do. Fortunately I have good betas to administer a kick in the right place at the right time. We all need it sometimes :)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It's like when you leave someone a post correcting their grammar and it's got a typo in the middle of it. These things are meant to keep us humble ;)

Exactly! So painful!

Good betas are the most valuable things in existence.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

So he killed one out of ten of the lies? Oh boy.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

One wonders....

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

Nice quote.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought so.

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

He will have to overcome the terror wrought upon him by the land pirates who decimated so many lies.

He is a lie, looking around furtively. Where are those pirate of the land who killed of 10% of his comrades?

He is a truth, battling with the lies. Employing the land pirates to eliminate the the lies, they keep killing a tenth and then a tenth of the remaining 90%, but however long the process, lies will be there.

But what is a land pirate?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

In this case, land pirates were the thuggish villains of the hypothetical novel he was using and an example of something one could be hyothetically writing - I pictured guys like the villains in Mad Max. In this case they were cultish sadists who raped and killed the protagonist's wife and daughter and blinded his son. The hypothetical story was about how the protanonist dealt with it all afterwards. It sounded pretty grim to me.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

disseminated, I presume, and of course the spell checker didn't complain.

[sympathetic, due to a number of malapropisms and total blanks due to own memory recall being, apparently, indexed by sounds and periodically getting its wires crossed. :<( ]

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It happens, definitely it happens. That's why we all need good editors! And lots of good proofreading.

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

Devastated. My local tv news reporter have been known to say that the house was decimated by fire, or a neighborhood was decimated by a natural disaster (when no one was killed). This is one of the errors that makes me tear my hair!

Another weird thing is sports reporters saying WimbleTon, hypercorrection I guess. :-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

This is one of the errors that makes me tear my hair!

It's an error that always particularly bothers me, too - possibly because the real meaning of the word is so dramatically precise, such a cool concept with such historical resonance. Also because whenever it's misused, the real drama of the moment is lost to me.

WimbleTon - heh!

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

by the land pirates who decimated so many lives. I can't even begin to guess what he thinks "decimated" means!

Sounds like he's American. Americans almost all seem to think that "decimated" means "devastated." Instead of just saying "devastated," they get high-falutin' and say a spiffy academic word... um, duh. When I was an undergraduate, it was in vogue to say "per se" as you spoke, as if you knew what it meant; people didn't like me much for asking them if they knew what language that was, and what the literal translation was. That one has faded from use a bit, but also now heavily in use is saying "instinct" or "instinctively" when "intuitive" is the correct nuance of meaning that they are looking for. I had my instructor at on-the-job window-training (post office clerk, need any stamps today sir?) say to me, "You do it often enough and then it's just instinct." Again, duh.

I am beginning to think that people tend to use words for fun, not for accuracy.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I am beginning to think that people tend to use words for fun, not for accuracy.

Yes, they do, and sometimes it works. Where would poetry be, if words had only narrow literal meanings?

But when meaning mangles sense... that's when it gets annoying,