What some of the best in the craft say about voice and rhythm, getting started, similes and metaphors, and the need for writers to “admit that nothing in this world makes sense.”
It was a cool winter’s day and I was on a minor dusting spree when I discovered tucked away in a far corner of my bookcase a paperback called Writers on Writing: A Bread Loaf Anthology. Published in 1991 by Middlebury College Press and edited by a couple of Middlebury English professors, Robert Pack and Jay Parini (neither of whom I’d heard of), the list of authors displayed on the cover piqued my interest. There, presented on a slant, a graphic treatment no doubt trendy in the late ’80s and early ’90s, was an all-star cast of writers I recognized–Stanley Elkin, Richard Ford, John Irvin, Erica Jong, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O’Brien–along with many names I didn’t. Holding the book in my non-dusting hand, I studied the cover and concluded I must have purchased it at some long ago library book sale, then tucked it away for safekeeping. (I’m always a sucker for books about the writing craft, and buy any I find, especially if they’re cheap.)
I set aside the dust rag and began reading. Dusting would have to wait.
Continue reading “Friday Five: Some thoughts on ‘Writers on Writing’”
Andrew Careaga 