Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Number 10 From Jonathan Franzen's Rules For Writing Fiction

You have to love before you can be relentless.

3 comments:

yogacephalus said...

I just finished another manuscript. And of course the same feeling: like someone is pouring lead on my brain. Defeat times ten.

22 poems, 22 prose things that I wish were stories but are really probably just bastardized prose poems...why do I want to write stories, I wonder? Why do I feel that, because I'm a poet by nature, I'm going to always fall short? (Question: do you ever have this feeling?)

There is also a 23rd poem, though, that "Am Ende Nur Liebe". Which I think of as my way of shaping that "falling short" feeling into a bear-hug.

End gratuitous, self-involved confessions.

Over and out.

Ahab Cloud said...

I've been resisting the urge to ask for this manuscript because I haven't sent you my remarks (unasked for, I know) on the last one.

I will be asking sometime soon.

Falling short . . . indeed. I choose to call that learning instead, and that makes all the difference. Corny, but true.

yogacephalus said...

yep, and on we go

i think that Dyer quote says it all doesn't it--the falling short is the very thing that propels you to the next thing...

Freud and his Lost Object stuff...