Advanced Writing - Week 1

Advanced Writing II Spring 2010 Tuesdays, 3:30-5:20pm

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.

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 nd century BCE, for favors he had given to Egyptian priests.

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.

Johannes Gutenberg 1400-1468 CE c. 1455, produced 200 copies of the Gutenberg Bible

Johannes Gutenberg a revolution in authority

“ The Battler” — Ernest Hemingway

“ Wild Sheep Chase” — Haruki Murakami

“ Dharma” — Billy Collins

“ The Brothers Rico” — Georges Simenon

“ Whose War” — John Edgar Wideman

“ Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” — Gay Talese

“ 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”

The Typewriter William Faulkner’s Portable Typewriter

How do you write? Longhand at first. Then I use the typewriter. You never write directly onto the computer? Oh no, I couldn’t do that. I want to be forced to work slowly because I don’t want to get too much on paper... I take a long time... I type and retype.

Jack Kerouac “ Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy.”

Jack Kerouac “ Write excitedly, swiftly, with writing- or-typing-cramps, in accordance… with the laws of orgasm.”

Jack Kerouac ON THE ROAD : 1 SINGLE TYPEWRITTEN PARAGRAPH, 120 FEET LONG

“ 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 don’t 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 don’t know how many times.” Georges Simenon

When & how does writing happen?

“ Who knows sometimes where stories come from? They are perhaps more attached to the author’s emotional life and come more out of inspiration than slogging. You shouldn’t write without inspiration—at 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

“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

“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

“ You end up with a keen sense of what you still have as a writer, and also of what you don’t have any longer. As you grow older, there’s no reason why you can’t 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

“ 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

“ There’s a lot of waiting around until something happens... For me it’s a very sporadic activity. Until recently, I thought ‘occasional poetry’ meant that you wrote only occasionally. So there’s a lot of waiting, and there’s a kind of vigilance involved.” Billy Collins WAITING

Everything is fine— the first bits of sun are on the yellow flowers behind the low wall, Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

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

Just looking around will suffice from here on in. Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

Who said I had to always play the secretary of the interior? Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

And I am getting good at being blank, staring at all the zeroes in the air. Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

It must have been all the time spent in the kayak this summer that brought this out, Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

the yellow one that went nicely with the pale blue life jacket— Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

the sudden, tippy buoyancy of the launch, then the exertion, striking into the wind against the short waves, Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

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

Not even that dark cormorant perched on the NO WAKE sign, his narrow head raised as if he were looking over something, Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

not even that inquisitive little fellow could bring me to write another word. Billy Collins Returning the Pencil to Its Tray

Writing is entwined with society.

“ To me, it’s 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

“ 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

by Dai Sijie Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

“ 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 people’s consciousness. Very often people don’t question the meaning of what they’re saying… “ English has more flexibility. It’s 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

Strunk & White The Elements of Style

1. Place yourself in the background

2. Write in a way that comes naturally

3. Work from a suitable design

8. Avoid the use of qualifiers

9. Do not affect a breezy manner

12. Do not construct awkward adverbs

13. Make sure the reader knows who is speaking

15. Do not use dialect unless your ear is good

18. Use figures of speech sparingly

19. Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity

21. Prefer the standard to the offbeat

Advanced Writing - Week 1

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