Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do -

Meredith Maran

Plume

2013

256 páginas

8h 32m

ISBN-10: 0452298156

Anyone who's ever sat down to write a novel or even a story knows how exhilarating and heartbreaking writing can be. So what makes writers stick with it? In Why We Write, twenty well-known authors candidly share what keeps them going and what they love most—and least—about their vocation.

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Os melhores trechos:

Ishmael Beah
- I got a glimpse then that my core reason for writing would be to expose people to certain realities and hope to deepen their understanding of the other, of places that may seem far away
- Be completely open to discovering things about yourself as you delve into your memories

Kate Christensen
- I understood instinctively that I had to wait until my life had a story, an arc, a shape that would lend itself to this sort of enterprise
- It's impossible to write about yourself when you're hiding
- When I'm writing about myself, I write out of a strong urge to protect myself. When I feel ego or self-justification or defensiveness creeping in or a wish to make myself look better than I was, I squelch it, if I can
- The story of a life lives in what you would rather not admit or say

Pearl Cleage
- Anais Nin's diaries
- I had to find those moments that would make a narrative arc, that would allow me to weave a coherent story from the various elements of my real life
- Ask yourself the question, Am I prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth? If you say yes, you have an opportunity to write something wonderful

Pat Conroy
- As yourself if you're prepared to make yourself vulnerable and not care about people's judgements. If you're not yet who you want to be, keep working on your life and write about it later
- I began to think that some of us are the designated rememberers. Why do we remember? I don't know. But I think that's why memoir interests us—because we're the ones who pass the stories
- Memoirs hurt people. Secrets hurt people. The question to ask yourself, will it do enough good to make it worth hurting people?

Kelly Corrigan
- Trust yourself. If you've remembered something very well—a fight, a kiss, a plane ride, a certain stranger—there's a reason. Keep writing until you figure out the significance of your most vivid memories

Edwidge Danticat
- I would worry about being like that person at a party who can't stop talking about himself or herself
- But I write what I want to write first and if I think it will upset folks close to me, I let them see it first. I understand you can't do that in journalism
- Don't mistake writing memoir for writing in your diary
- Make it real. Feed your senses. Go back to the place you're writing about. Do some research that allows you to bring your subject(s) to life

Meghan Daum
- You have to be completely transparent with the reader. You have to literally say, "X, who did not want his name to be used for Y reason."
- The hope is those confidences will inspire the reader to unearth some of his own feelings or insights
- When you write about yourself—actually, when you write about anything—the goal is to offer up just the right ingredients in just the right portions
- "Writers are always selling someone out." This can be true of reporting a newspaper article or writing a memoir
- Become an expert at something other than yourself

Nick Flynn
- Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (adaptado no filme Being Flynn)

A. M. Homes
- The End of Alice
- There are things we already know and spend a lot of time resisting. You can try, but the amount of energy you spend trying not to know what you already know will be exhausting
- You need the story to dictate its own terms to you. When it does, why resist?

Sue Monk Kidd
- I know now that this internal backlash of fear is often what comes when we step out there and do something bold. But at the time I thought I must be insane
- Capítulo "Writing needs reading"
- It's a useful tension, just like the tension I sometimes feel between believing utterly in what I'm doing and doubting it at the same time. Somehow, that latter pull of opposites has always brought out the best in my work
- Hold on to the part of yourself that feels like a beginner
- Read at the level you want to write

Anne Lamott
- Operating Instructions

Sandra Tsing Loh
- Nascida em 11 fevereiro 1962

James McBride
- You have to narrow the focus of the story so it has the push of a creek in a narrow spot
- Whatever you have to do to preserve that innocence—the "is that so?" element—you should do it. You can't be someone who knows everything—"been there, done that." If you know everything you shouldn't be a writer. You should be God.

Dani Shapiro
- "One of the producers said, 'Just be yourself,' and I thought, 'Being yourself is hard, hard work.'"
- The idea of truth in memoir is absurd. Memory is utterly mutable, changeable, and constantly in motion. you can't fact-check memory
- We can't know what is going to impact another person, or why

Darin Strauss
- Anywhere I had selfish, inappropriate thoughts, I kept them all in the book. Every chance I got, I made myself look bad. If nonfiction is any good, it has to be harder on the protagonist than on anybody else

Cheryl Strayed
- My biggest worry is fulfilling the mission of literature, which is to tell us what it means to be human
- I want to know what meaning he or she made of what happened

Ayelet Waldman
- Writing a story that changes the way someone sees their life, or just gives them a sense of not being alone in the world, is incredibly satisfying
- Honesty doesn't demand completeness

Jesmyn Ward
- Creative nonfiction classes

Edmund White
- Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Felice Picano, George Whitmore, Christopher Cox, Michael Grumley
- The Joy of Gay Sex
- A Boy's Own Story
- The Beautiful Room Is Empty
- The Farewell Symphony
- Out of the Closet, Onto the Bookshelf
- "Archaeologist of gossip"
- I think fiction should be representative, and memoir should be extremely honest and personal. It should show the author for who he is, warts and all
- The fiction writer's job is to turn out a manuscript that is well shaped, that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and is fairly suspenseful and whose characters behave in a fairly coherent believable way. Those demands are higher in fiction than in nonfiction
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
- A Million Little Pieces
- Sit in a café by yourself, and listen to the people in the next booth. You're clear about what's going on. You know they're fighting about sex, or fidelity, or money. You don't know who Martha is, but you get it. Apply that to your writing