Author Topic: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others  (Read 150760 times)

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About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« on: August 02, 2007, 04:11:35 pm »
I have some notes from talks by Annie Proulx that I attended and also a panel discussion of Wyoming writers that I'd like to summarize here. In addition, another literary conference is coming up in Cheyenne and I'll have info about it.

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Offline MaineWriter

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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2007, 04:28:53 pm »
Thank you, Lee. Please do summarize and share!

L
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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2007, 09:07:35 am »
Toast has posted this piece by AP from the New York Times.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=12384.msg234285;boardseen#
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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2007, 03:02:11 pm »
Garrison Keillor has insightful thoughts on the craft of writing during his weekly monologue about Lake Woebegone on the special literary broadcast of The Prairie Home COmpanion.

More about the program, and download:

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2007/08/11/
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Offline brokebackjack

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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2007, 05:16:03 am »
thanks Lee!
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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2008, 09:34:04 pm »
I was forging ahead on my nonfiction writing, but the fiction was languishing. I blamed it on my lack of imagination. I planned novels and wrote outlines, but I couldn't follow up. Finally, I reached a breakthru. Instead of outlines, I wrote a 2- or 3-page summary. I'm finding it so much easier to follow a summary instead of an outline. For some reason, I feel duty-bound to stray from any outline I create! My most recent novel idea is called "A Boy and His Truck." Just a working title. I have nearly 100 pages written and so far a boy has appeared only in flashback, and a truck has not appeared at all!!
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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2008, 09:49:53 am »
I was forging ahead on my nonfiction writing, but the fiction was languishing. I blamed it on my lack of imagination. I planned novels and wrote outlines, but I couldn't follow up. Finally, I reached a breakthru. Instead of outlines, I wrote a 2- or 3-page summary. I'm finding it so much easier to follow a summary instead of an outline. For some reason, I feel duty-bound to stray from any outline I create! My most recent novel idea is called "A Boy and His Truck." Just a working title. I have nearly 100 pages written and so far a boy has appeared only in flashback, and a truck has not appeared at all!!

I need to do more of that!

One of the things I've discovered as a newbie fiction writer (i.e., this is probably old news to experienced ones!) is that you can plot out chapters and generally write them in sequence but when some good ideas, plot lines, dialogue, etc. for some future chapter pops into your mind for any reason you'd better write it down all at once.  Taking a linear approach -- "I'll write that down when the time comes to do that chapter" -- results in quite a lot of lost material.

Apparently Annie Proulx learned that a long time ago, jotting down small but important bits as they come:

Quote
I need to know which mushrooms smell like maraschino cherries and which like dead rats, to note that a magpie in flight briefly resembles a wooden spoon, to recognize vertically trapped suppressed lee-wave clouds; so much of this research is concerned with four-dimensional observation and notation. These jottings go into cheap paper-covered notebooks that I keep in a desultory fashion, more often onto the backs of envelopes and the margins of newspapers, from there onto the floor of the truck or onto the stair landing atop a stack of faxes and bills.

(quoted from http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,12384.msg234496.html#msg234496  - thanks, Toast!)


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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #7 on: July 11, 2008, 11:42:31 am »
What a great quote, Marge! I can just SEE her, in her truck, climbing the stairs, etc.

Funny that she hardly ever talks about the computer.

One thing it's great for is organizing things that aren't linear!!

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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #8 on: October 23, 2010, 02:44:45 pm »
I was reading about the concept of the Easter Egg, which is used in literature but more often in software and videogames, and wondered if it would be a good way to describe the way Annie Proulx puts hidden meanings into her works, such as making Jack a bullrider, the coffeepot and bucket, the salt shaker.
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Re: About writing--from Annie Proulx and others
« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2015, 09:43:20 pm »
NPR had four writers saying pithy things about writing on August 29. I loved the way Ursa Le Guin described "crowding" and "leaping", both of which Annie Proulx does in her writing. Catch the interview here: http://www.npr.org/2015/08/29/435549081/ursula-k-le-guin-steers-her-craft-into-a-new-century

The other writers quoted were Elizabeth Gilbert, who's everywhere these days. She was quoting, surprisingly, Tom Waits as an inspiration on Radiolab's "Me, Myself and Muse". There's also some scary stuff from the late Oliver Sacks.
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