Barbara Adde’s Reviews > Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories > Status Update
Barbara Adde
is starting
“…it is because the same iron rigor needed to begin the book is required to end it. But a story has no beginning, I end: Either it works or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, my own experience, and the experience of others, shows that most of the time it is better for one’s health to start again in another direction, or toss the story in the wastebasket.”
— Aug 24, 2026 08:54PM
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Barbara’s Previous Updates
Barbara Adde
is starting
“Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.”
— Aug 24, 2026 09:11PM
Barbara Adde
is starting
“The effort involved in writing a short story is as intense as beginning a novel, wheee everything must be defined in the first paragraph: structure, tone, style, rhythm, length, and sometimes even the personality of a character. All the rest is the pleasure of writing, the most intimate, solitary pleasure one can imagine, and if the rest of one’s life is not spent correcting the novel…
— Aug 24, 2026 08:52PM