tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269645828546245860.post1682959021043528032..comments2024-03-26T19:49:12.341-04:00Comments on Workshop Heretic: If I wrote blog posts modeled off glam rock ballads, this is what I'd writeJacob Weberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17591038654403487222noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269645828546245860.post-75356581763424340902017-07-12T04:25:23.595-04:002017-07-12T04:25:23.595-04:00I think the shut-in writer is unnecessary and poss...I think the shut-in writer is unnecessary and possibly unhealthy, but a writer should be highly aware of the tradition in which one writes, and that takes commitment to read and read and read. Every generation has more to read than the one before. At the same time, if one is going to comment on the times in which we now live, that takes a lot more study than it once did to even understand what is known about the world we now live in. So I can understand thinking that the only way one can even hope to climb the mountain of knowledge one needs is to make it the main focus of one's life. <br /><br />I balance that, though, by thinking that even if you do dedicate yourself to climbing that mountain, you'll never climb it. So that's not the right way to deal with this mountain. Really, this is a big part of my attempt to develop my aesthetic sensibility. It's why I've asked myself if I'm really even a "literary" fiction writer. I might be more of a general fiction writer who likes to dabble in serious themes. Jacob Weberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17591038654403487222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269645828546245860.post-866335148622789352017-07-11T20:28:36.594-04:002017-07-11T20:28:36.594-04:00Surely the notion of the writer as some shut-in is...Surely the notion of the writer as some shut-in is largely a modern contrivance. It takes no time at all to find so many great counterexamples, great writers who lived large, that one has to be not a little skeptical. (There's your litotes.) Something like Tom Wolfe's Painted Word lingers in the back of my mind in connection with this modern pose.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269645828546245860.post-60893402111208146512017-07-11T18:52:06.461-04:002017-07-11T18:52:06.461-04:00Are you who I think you are? Because that would be...Are you who I think you are? Because that would be kind of amazing. I've been reading "Against the Workshop" over and over for a few years now. <br /><br />One of the early posts I wrote on this blog was how I had a moment in my 20s after the Marine Corps when I wrote one of those ridiculous life statements, and it included a section in it about how I'd give up family life to become a great writer. (I was married at the time, so writing that was probably not a great sign for my first marriage.) I later repented of that thinking. It seems to me now that if I weren't willing to forego writing Moby Dick for the happiness of my kids that writing the book wouldn't mean much. I think of that story of Faulkner and "nobody remembers Shakespeare's daughter." Not saying artists need to be saints, or that being a terrible person invalidates your art, but personally, now that I have a family, I can't retroactively go back to solitude now. I have to do the best I can with all the things I have a moral obligation to tend to, and try to find a way to express what's important within those limits. It might mean failure, but failure was always a strong possibility, even if I'd given my whole life to art.<br /><br />I really can't say thanks enough for commenting here. That made these many years of blogging worth it. If you're not Anis Shivani and you're just a dude messing with me, please don't tell me. Jacob Weberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17591038654403487222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269645828546245860.post-87070850106173365452017-07-11T17:46:50.599-04:002017-07-11T17:46:50.599-04:00Forgive me for intruding. It's interesting but...Forgive me for intruding. It's interesting but just today I was contemplating what to say at my book launch on Friday. A book called literary writing in the 21st century: conversations. And I was thinking today of an essay I once wrote, new rules for writers, which advocates the kind of solitude and commitment you've mentioned here. Then I thought, somebody listening to that might be tempted to give up. I have to say that I do have life experience in areas you might find surprising, even the corporate world. But I still think experience is secondary to imagination which comes from solitude. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07177540529802801563noreply@blogger.com