David Rain's Blog - Posts Tagged "on-reading"
The Hundred-Book Challenge: What does your reading say about you?
When students tell me they want to be writers, I ask them three questions. The first is: “Why?” The answers are usually vague. Seldom, indeed never in my experience, does anyone talk about being rich and famous. The commonest response is: “I just enjoy writing.”
This is better, but not as promising as it sounds. Plenty of people enjoy writing without being good at it, and professional writing, with its endless drafts and revisions, involves difficult and often frustrating work that the most hardened professional won’t, in any immediate sense, enjoy. No worthwile occupation is enjoyable all the time. Being a writer is an activity as serious as being a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, or a physicist. If you think that’s a pretentious thing to say, fine. But you’ll never be a good writer unless you’re sustained by a deep and abiding sense of mission. Continue reading
This is better, but not as promising as it sounds. Plenty of people enjoy writing without being good at it, and professional writing, with its endless drafts and revisions, involves difficult and often frustrating work that the most hardened professional won’t, in any immediate sense, enjoy. No worthwile occupation is enjoyable all the time. Being a writer is an activity as serious as being a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, or a physicist. If you think that’s a pretentious thing to say, fine. But you’ll never be a good writer unless you’re sustained by a deep and abiding sense of mission. Continue reading
Do You Remember That Night With Old Charlie? What's under your skin, not under your nose
I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the word “expatriate,” just to prove that I know how to spell it. You’ve no doubt noticed how almost everyone nowadays, including journalists for so-called quality newspapers, believes the word is “ex-patriot” – the abbreviation of which is, of course, “ex-pat” rather than “expat.” Even I have been referred to as an “ex-pat,” which I certainly am not. Continue reading
Hermes of the Ways: David Rain on why he loves typewriters
The Classic Typewriter Page is a brilliant website exploring pretty much everything you could want to know about typewriters. Among its many features is a series of essays in which contemporary writers explain why they still love – and use – these great machines. David now has an essay there, titled “Hermes of the Ways,”… Continue reading
The Three Distances: How novels work (or, perhaps, should work)
I can’t remember when I first heard of the “Three Distances,” but I’ve been fascinated by the idea for many years. It’s a concept about how novels work – or, perhaps, should work – and strikes me as true. It explains why some novels seems trivial and others profound. It shows that the novel, as a form, has a purpose and a meaning. It helps distinguish the great (or good) novels from the bad ones and the fakes. It also suggests the stance a novelist should take towards his or her material. Continue reading
