- 1. Advanced Writing II Spring 2010 Tuesdays, 3:30-5:20pm
2. What is writing? 3. a physical act. 4. set in stone 5. set in
stone The Abu Salbikh Tablet Circa 2500 BCE A Sumerian wisdom text
in cuneiform. The oldest known copy of Instructions of Shuruppak.
Found in southern Iraq, at the site of an small Sumerian city.
Stored in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. Stolen during the Second Iraq
War by looters. 6. The Rosetta Stone 7. Found in August, 1799 by
Bouchard, near Rosetta, on the western mouth of the Nile River.
Black basalt Deciphered by Jean-Francois Champollion in 1822 Greek,
Demotic, and Heiroglyphics A gift to Ptolemy V, the Greek ruler of
Egypt in the 2 ndcentury BCE, for favors he had given to Egyptian
priests. 8. 9. 10. Papyrus 11. Papyrus A material prepared in
ancient Egypt from the pithy stem of a water plant, used in sheets
throughout the ancient Mediterranean world for writing or painting
on and also for making rope, sandals, and Boats. 12. Homer 13.
Herodotus 14. Thucydides 15. parchment 16. parchment = animal skin
17. 1041 CE Movable Clay Type 18. Geoffrey Chaucer 1342-1400 19.
THE PRINTING PRESS 20. Johannes Gutenberg 1400-1468 CE c. 1455,
produced 200 copies of the Gutenberg Bible 21. Johannes Gutenberg a
revolution in authority 22. putting pen to paper 23. 24. The
Battler Ernest Hemingway 25. 26. Naguib Mahfouz 27. 28. Wild Sheep
Chase Haruki Murakami 29. 30. Dharma Billy Collins 31. 32. The
Brothers Rico Georges Simenon 33. 34. Whose War John Edgar Wideman
35. 36. Frank Sinatra Has a Cold Gay Talese 37.
38.
- The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of
them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease
considering human love, which remains as grisly and golden as ever,
no matter what is tattooed upon the warm tympanic page.
- Donald Barthelme, Rebecca
39. The Typewriter William Faulkners Portable Typewriter 40.
- Longhand at first. Then I use the typewriter.
- You never write directly onto the computer?
- Oh no, I couldnt do that. I want to be forced to work
- slowly because I dont want to get too much on
- paper... I take a long time... I type and retype.
41. Jack Kerouac Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild
typewritten pages, for yr own joy. 42. Jack Kerouac Write
excitedly, swiftly, with writing- or-typing-cramps, in accordance
with the laws of orgasm. 43. Jack Kerouac ON THE ROAD :1 SINGLE
TYPEWRITTEN PARAGRAPH, 120 FEET LONG 44. 45. T.C. Boyle 46. 47.
Hunter S. Thompson 48. What else is writing? 49. communication
50.
- One (problem) which will probably haunt me more than any other
is the problem of communication. I mean communication between two
people. The fact that we are I dont know how many millions of
people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely
impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest
tragic themes in the world. When I was a young boy I was afraid of
it. I would almost scream because of it. It gave me such a
sensation of solitude, of loneliness. That is a theme I have taken
I dont know how many times.
Georges Simenon 51. When & how does writing happen? 52.
- Who knows sometimes where stories come from? They are perhaps
more attached to the authors emotional life and come more out of
inspiration than slogging. You shouldnt write without inspirationat
least not very often... A novel is a job. Story writers working on
a novel are typically in pain through the entire thing. But a story
can be like a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather
exciting weekend.
Lorrie Moore INSPIRATION 53.
- You can write any time people will leave you alone and not
interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough
about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in
love.
Ernest Hemingway LOVE 54.
- I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry
is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early
poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather
quickly.
Umberto Eco YOUTH 55.
- You end up with a keen sense of what you still have as a
writer, and also of what you dont have any longer. As you grow
older, theres no reason why you cant be wiser as a novelist than
you ever were before. You should know more about human nature every
year of your life. Do you write about it quite as well or as
brilliantly as you once did? No, not quite.
Norman Mailer EXPERIENCE 56.
- There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no
shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory.
Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.
The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him
advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the
old writer, he wants to beat him.
William Faulkner OBSTINACY 57.
- Theres a lot of waiting around until something happens... For
me its a very sporadic activity. Until recently, I thought
occasional poetry meant that you wrote only occasionally. So theres
a lot of waiting, and theres a kind of vigilance involved.
Billy Collins WAITING 58.
- the first bits of sun are on
- the yellow flowers behind the low wall,
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 59.
- people in cars are on their way to work,
- and I will never have to write again.
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 60.
- will suffice from here on in.
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 61.
- Who said I had to always play
- the secretary of the interior?
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 62.
- And I am getting good at being blank,
- staring at all the zeroes in the air.
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 63.
- It must have been all the time spent
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 64.
- nicely with the pale blue life jacket
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 65.
- then the exertion, striking
- into the wind against the short waves,
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 66.
- but the best was drifting back,
- the paddle resting athwart the craft,
- and me mindless in the middle of time.
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 67.
- Not even that dark cormorant
- perched on the NO WAKE sign,
- as if he were looking over something,
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 68.
- not even that inquisitive little fellow
- could bring me to write another word.
Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray 69. Writing is
entwined with society. 70.
- To me, its a novel that pulls you inside the central nervous
system of the characters . . . and makes you feel in your bones
their motivations as affected by the society of which they are a
part. It is folly to believe that you can bring the psychology of
an individual successfully to life without putting him very firmly
in a social setting.
Tom Wolfe A SOCIAL SETTING 71.
- I think of art, at its most significant, as a Distant Early
Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture
what is beginning to happen to it.
Marshall McLuhan EARLY WARNING 72. by Dai Sijie Balzac and the
Little Chinese Seamstress 73.
- The Chinese language has a lot of political jargon. You can
talk at length without saying much, because these pieces of jargon
become like formulas for public speech. And those expressions
become a part of peoples consciousness. Very often people dont
question the meaning of what theyre saying
- English has more flexibility. Its a very plastic, very
shapeable, very expressive language. In that sense it feels quite
natural. The Chinese language is less natural. Written Chinese is
not supposed to represent natural speech, and there are many
different spoken dialects that correspond to the single written
language. The written word will be the same in all dialects, but in
speech it is a hundred different words.
Ha Jin WHY ENGLISH? Author of WAITING and several other books
74. WHAT MAKES GOOD WRITING? 75. Strunk & White The Elements of
Style 76. 1. Place yourself in the background 77. 2. Write in a way
that comes naturally 78. 3. Work from a suitable design 79. 4.
Write with nouns and verbs 80. 5. Revise and rewrite 81. 6. Do not
overwrite 82. 7. Do not overstate 83. 8. Avoid the use of
qualifiers 84. 9. Do not affect a breezy manner 85. 10. Use
orthodox spelling 86. 11. Do not explain too much 87. 12. Do not
construct awkward adverbs 88. 13. Make sure the reader knows who is
speaking 89. 14. Avoid fancy words 90. 15. Do not use dialect
unless your ear is good 91. 16. Be clear 92. 17. Do not inject
opinion 93. 18. Use figures of speech sparingly 94. 19. Do not take
shortcuts at the cost of clarity 95. 20. Avoid foreign languages
96. 21. Prefer the standard to the offbeat 97. E.B. WHITE 1899-1985
98.