Writers on the process of writing

This is a small, lively, and enriching collection of quotes on the actual process of writing as experienced by some of the most popular authors past and present.

“Write drunk;        edit sober.”
— Ernest Hemingway

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another.” 

— John Steinbeck 

“The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I've had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, DON’T THINK!” 

— Ray Bradbury, The Writer’s Digest, February 1976

“I hate writing, I love having written.”

— Dorothy Parker 

“The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.” 

— E.B. White in The New York Times 

“I had a closing line for Something Happened before I began writing the book. It was 'I am a cow.' For six years I thought that was good. I had it on one of my three-by-five notecards. Then I wasn't all that happy with it, and finally I discarded it. But it seemed good at the time, and besides, I can’t start writing until I have a closing line.” 

— Joseph Heller, The Paris Review

“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”
— Flannery O'Connor 

“I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it…” 

— Elmore Leonard 

“A word after a word after a word is power.” 

— Margaret Atwood

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.” 

— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country 

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” 

— Jack Kerouac

“If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all. The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.” 

— Anne Tyler 

“I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.” 

— John Irving

“I don't speak to Gerry (husband). I write for three to four hours, not answering the phone, not getting out of my night clothes.” 

— Alice Munro 

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
— Stephen King,     On Writing

Note: I have tried hard to find the original source for the images of the authors used in this post but couldn’t get them all. Here are the ones I did:

Ray Bradbury: NASA/JPL-Caltech

E.B. White: The New Yorker

Joseph Heller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac, and John Irving: Wikimedia Commons

BOOK REVIEW

Essential reading on India

How much do you know about my country? Find out by reading these books on India offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

If I were asked which books on India I’d recommend the most to someone unfamiliar with the country, I’d have no hesitation in mentioning five books which, in my opinion, represent the voice of India in terms of its social, cultural and political ethos.

These books, which comprise two fictional and three non-fictional works, collectively, are: The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru (1946); Gandhi: An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mohandas K. Gandhi (translated from Gujarati to English in 1940); the great epics Ramayana (1957) and Mahabharata (1958) by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, statesman and last Governor-General of India; the Malgudi trilogy by renowned author R.K. Narayan (1935, 1937 & 1945), and Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1980) which earned India’s greatest fiction writer (in my opinion) the Booker of Bookers.

The list is subjective and, as with all lists, is open to debate. While I had several titles in mind, I narrowed it down to these five books because they give you a comprehensive picture of India and its colourful people and their way of life and because they are some of my favourite books by Indian writers. A lot of my knowledge of my own country has come from reading and rereading these literary works.

For now, I will stick to Nehru’s brilliant and original work.

The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru (1946), the charismatic first Prime Minister of independent India, will take your breath away, no exaggeration. For three reasons: Nehru’s command over the language, his engrossing writing style, and substance that will enrich you like few books on India will.

Writing from his imprisonment in Ahmadnagar Fort, Maharashtra, Nehru begins his discovery thus:

“It is more than twenty months since we were brought here, more than twenty months of my ninth term of imprisonment. The new moon, a shimmering crescent in the darkening sky, greeted us on our arrival here. The bright fortnight of the waxing moon had begun. Ever since then each coming of the new moon has been a reminder to me that another month of my imprisonment is over. So it was with my last term of imprisonment which began with the new moon, just after the Deepavali, the festival of light. The moon, ever a companion to me in prison, has grown more friendly with closer acquaintance, a reminder of the loveliness of this world, of the waxing and waning of life, of light following darkness, of death and resurrection following each other in interminable succession.” 

Nehru, who dedicated the book to his colleagues and co-prisoners in the Ahmadnagar Fort Prison Camp, where he was imprisoned from August 9, 1942, to March 28, 1945, takes the reader through centuries of India’s rich cultural and religious diversity and heritage beginning with the Indus Valley Civilisation and descending all the way down to the British rule in India. 

The Discovery of India must be read along with Nehru’s other two major works Glimpses of World History and Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru.

As his daughter and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi observes in her foreword, “The Discovery delves deep into the sources of India's national personality. Together, these books have moulded a whole generation of Indians and inspired persons from many other countries.”

The Discovery of India should be a necessary companion for all Indians and Indophiles who would like to delve more into the country’s glorious civilisation and history. For others interested in world history, this book will be nothing short of a treasure.

You can download Nehru’s three books here:

The Discovery of India

Glimpses of World History

Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru

FILM REVIEW

The Ross Sisters in Broadway Rhythm (1944)

This week I am taking the shortcut to Overlooked Films and Television at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom by writing about a small part of a film I have never seen before. For more gripping stuff, check out Sergio’s post on Top 20 Spy Movies over at his blog Tipping My Fedora.

My sister-in-law, who lives in Vancouver, Canada, sent me this classic musical video called Solid Potato Salad by the Ross Sisters—Aggie Ross, Elmira Ross, and Maggie Ross—whose real names, according to Wikipedia, are Veda Victoria, Dixie Jewel and Betsy Ann Ross. I have never heard of them before, but I loved what I saw. The song-and-dance sequence in this 5.14-minute video from the 1944-movie Broadway Rhythm will leave you spellbound. The Ross sisters sing for nearly a minute or so and then they do all kinds of strange things with their bodies—contortions you probably won’t see even in a circus. Check it out… 

IMDb informs you that Broadway Rhythm was directed by Roy Del Ruth, who also made Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), Born to Dance (1936), Topper Returns (1941), and Ziegfeld Follies (1945). The entertainment website sums up the story thus:  “Broadway producer Johnny Demming (George Murphy) courts big-name talent for his upcoming musical show, oblivious to the talent all around him, in his family and friends. When Johnny finally lands Hollywood star Helen Hoyt (Ginny Simms) for his cast, Helen herself tries opening Johnny's eyes to the talents of his dad and sister. But Johnny remains adamant. Will his family and friends launch their own show, in competition with Johnny's?” 

If you know more about the Ross Sisters and their craft or if you have seen the musical, please don’t hesitate to enlighten me…

A blogger’s dilemma 

A "Bookshelf with music writings" is the title of this vintage art by Italian
Baroque painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi, on display at the Civico Museo
Bibliografico Musicale (international museum and library of music) in Bologna.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

It’s a little over three years since I started blogging and the one thing I have learnt over this period is that you have to be very focused while blogging. I started to blog in August 2009 and my posts in the first year covered all sorts of topics including current affairs, my other chief area of interest outside of books, music and cinema not to mention chess, comics and crosswords.

It took plenty of visits to other people’s blogs and websites, listed to your right, before I realised that what you need for a blog to get going, in terms of a unique selling point and incoming traffic, is to specialise in one or two areas, such as books and films. So I took my blog to the cleaners: I removed all posts that were not connected with either books or films. I write about music occasionally, under Music & Lyrics, and don’t remember the last time I wrote anything about chess and crosswords.

Chess and crosswords are still two of my favourite pastimes. My father taught me chess when I was in first standard (grade) and showed me how to solve and compile crosswords by the time I was in the eighth. We used to put our heads together and solve the challenging London Times cryptic crossword that was popular among journalists in India. We also compiled crosswords for our respective newspapers. Later, my wife and I solved concise and cryptic crosswords in various newspapers. These were trivial pursuits but they were immensely satisfying. 

I still read and collect comic-books, which I have categorised under books. I write about comics as often as I remember to, though I haven’t posted anything of consequence lately. 

Our limited bookshelf is like a chameleon: it changes colours depending
on what we’re going to read in coming days. The rest of our books are in wall cabinets,
in the attic, and in my office cabinet. The little black box on the extreme right is
the router (wi-fi modem). Photo: Thayn P. Trikannad

Today, I post almost entirely about books and films and, in my view, it poses a new dilemma, one I hadn't noticed till the other day. Take books, for instance. Owing to my wide interest in fiction, I tend to read all kinds of books and across all genres with the exception of romance, especially the Harlequin type. I once picked up a novel by Barbara Cartland out of sheer curiosity because she was hugely popular in India, in the 1970s and 1980s. It didn't click. The grand dame of historical romances holds the Guinness World Record for the most novels—23 in 1983—published in a single year. 

I have gone off track...

Most of the blogs I visit are dedicated to specific genres, in the main western, detective-mystery, crime and suspense, war, horror, and sf and fantasy, and they are doing a terrific job. Click on any of the blogs on the right and you’ll see what I mean.

My question is: do you think reviewing books across genres keeps away readers who are inclined to visit genre-specific blogs like detective-fiction? Am I at a disadvantage when I cover all fiction?

To give you an idea, between September and November I reviewed books from seven different genres and this is what it looked like…

Western: Saddle on a Cloud by Frank C. Robertson & The Lone Deputy by Wayne D. Overholser

Espionage: Journey Toward Death by Amos Aricha

Thriller: The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty

Mystery: The secret Adversary and The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

Crime and Suspense: Cape Fear (The Executioners) by John D. MacDonald

Horror: Anthologies: Best Ghost Stories, The Haunted Hour, and Devil Stories by various authors

Comics: The Mighty Marvel Superheroes’ Cookbook

If you’re strictly into, say, detective-mystery, which appears to be the running flavour among many bloggers, would you hop over to my blog and read the above reviews? More importantly, would you come back?

I hope you do…

BOOK REVIEW

Saddle on a Cloud (1952) by Frank C. Robertson

I’m on a western-fiction roll and here’s one more to add to last week’s The Lone Deputy by Wayne D. Overholser for Patti Abbott’s Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Pattinase and Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Drift Wood, framed for cattle rustling seven years ago, returns as foreman of the Flying M ranch owned by his friend, Doc Egan, to clear his name. But, Drift has a fight on his hands…

My copy of the book

Drift Wood to his friends, Driftwood to his enemies… Either way, the hero of Saddle on a Cloud has been a drifter for seven years, framed for rustling and banished from the town of Idanha where he and his three friends grew up. One day, he decides to return “home” to help his old friend, Doc Egan, fight against rival outfits led by Hoke Guyer, a brute of a man who wants to take over Doc’s Flying M ranch at any cost.

Doc and his wife Edith, and their two little children, live in fear as Hoke accuses Doc of stealing his cows which his men force on to the Flying M range as a nasty pressure tactic. Backing the big, hulking man are his crooked foreman Bish McCarty and hired gun Latigo Spence and nearly all the members of the cattlemen’s association who believe Doc is a rustler. There are a few ranchers who believe he's innocent and keep away from the shady events that unfold at regular intervals.

(Bish McCarty) spoke quietly, “You were told to stay away from this country, Drift. You made a big mistake by coming back.”

“It’s a free country, Bish; hasn't anybody ever told you?” he queried easily.

Standing between Hoke and his wicked aim is fast-gun Drift Wood and his two other friends, Ev Clayton, an Englishman and a gambler, and Bert ‘Teach’ Thackeray, a carefree cowpuncher who works with him on the Flying M.

While Drift is looking out for Doc, his own back is covered by Ev and Teach, and together the four childhood buddies take on Hoke Guyer, owner of the Big G, and his cronies. 

Frank C. Robertson

But, is it really all that simple? Not when Drift finds out the “treachery” of one of his friends and “blackmail” to boot. It comes as a huge shock to the honest-to-goodness cowboy who would rather face his enemies unarmed than live with the bitter truth that his closest friend could have prevented his frame-up and ostracism seven years ago and saved Doc Egan all his troubles now.

Saddle on a Cloud is a test of character of the major players—the good people—in the story who, apart from Drift Wood, Doc Egan, Ev Clayton and Teach, include Doc’s wife Edith who feels safer with Drift around; Bish McCarty’s sister, Clover, who is in love with Drift; Dolly Fannin, a tobacco-chewing cowgirl whose father keeps his distance from Hoke Guyer; Kitty, Ev Clayton’s beautiful sister and Drift’s love interest; Dee Walker, owner of the Bull Corral saloon who's behind Drift with his shotgun; and Ben Larkin, a well-liked and respected black man in the Flying M outfit who swears allegiance to Drift.

These people remain loyal to Drift whose appeal lies in his innate capacity to shoulder the burden of his suffering friends, Doc and Edith, even if it might get him killed. Therein lies the appeal of the book.

The 188-page novel by Frank Chester Robertson (1890-1969), an American writer of dozens of westerns, short stories and newspaper articles, keeps you absorbed from the beginning to end. The story is written in an easy style, which I suspect is a Robertson trademark (this being my first novel by him), and plays out a lot in the country where the rival outfits of Doc Egan and Hoke Guyer hustle cattle onto each other’s range. There is almost a romantic quality about the way fearless cowboys like Drift Wood, armed with a six-shooter, stand their ground and take on a group of enemy riders trying bulldoze their way onto somebody else's range. Drift would rather defuse the tension with a spoken word than with a quick draw of his gun.

“Keep it down, Bish,” Drift cut in. “You’ll get the second slug. I’m tired of fooling with punks like you and Phil who ain’t neither one dry behind the ears.”

This is the kind of stuff I like reading in a western and Robertson tells it really well. While reading Saddle on a Cloud I couldn't help wishing I was there on the range, watching from a safe distance and away from the possible line of fire. I wondered what range wars or conflicts were like in the real Wild West, and how realistic their depiction in western novels. I'm sure it can’t have been fun.

FILM REVIEW

Fargo (1996)

Todd Mason will have the links to many Overlooked Films and Television over at his blog Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to check them out.

Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand): So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well, I just don’t understand it.

“Now you see me, now you don’t” is how I’d describe actors like Francis McDormand. I first saw her in Mississippi Burning (1988) as the wife of a county deputy sheriff who batters her for helping two FBI agents in their investigation of the murders of civil rights activists. At that time I didn’t realise she was McDormand. I must have been engrossed in Gene Hackman’s hardnosed character, especially the part where he takes a razor blade to her husband’s throat in a barbershop.

It took another film, Fargo, to bring her back into the narrow confines of my memory. Between these two movies and especially since the Coen brothers’ 1996 film I might have seen McDormand in some of her other ventures, though I don’t remember any, not unless I run through her filmography. I haven’t done that so far, perhaps after I post this piece. 

What I liked most about Fargo, superbly written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, is McDormand’s character, small-town police chief Marge Gunderson, particularly her way of speaking with a slight expression on her face and a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. I read, somewhere, that her distinctive speech, where the words are delivered slow and long, is reminiscent of the prevailing accent in the Midwestern state of Minnesota, the winter setting of the film. For instance, Marge often responds with “yaaa, yaaa!” emphasising on the vowels. You kinda like the way she talks.

A very pregnant Marge Gunderson is woken up from slumber, so to say, to investigate murders on her turf, the result of a kidnapping gone wrong. Of cheerful disposition, Marge leads a quiet and contented life with her husband Norm Gunderson (John Carroll Lynch) who is supportive of his wife and her job in a rather unassuming way. 

Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who works for his rich father-in-law’s car dealership, is steeped in debt and in a last-ditch effort to get out of his financial crisis decides to have his wife kidnapped so that he can milk her father for a hefty ransom and clear his dues. He hires Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) to carry out the task on the condition that there would be no bloodshed and, above all, his wife would come to no harm.

However, the kidnap caper does not go as planned and soon bodies start piling up and it’s not long before Marge begins to sniff around Jerry’s office and asks him questions that make him more awkward and uncomfortable than he already is. 

There is nothing pretentious about Fargo. The two main characters, Marge and Jerry, are ordinary people, but opposites: one is driven by her values and ethics, the other by his greed and ambition. The film rolls at an easy pace as police chief Marge Gunderson investigates the murders in a quiet and matter-of-fact manner, in what could be deemed as a realistic setting for a crime thriller. Although seasoned actor Macy gives out a fine performance with his bungling act, it’s McDormand who walks away with the honours—she won an Oscar for her role (as did the Coens for best writing and screenplay). This is her film.

The Lone Deputy by Wayne D. Overholser, 1991

It’s Friday and time for another Forgotten Books edition at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

Price Regan stood alone, as terribly alone as a man could be, but that was the cost of being a lawman.

My copy of the book

The story of The Lone Deputy by the late American western author Wayne D. Overholser reminded me of the stories I used to read in pocket-sized cowboy comics, known as Cowboy Western Comics or Western Picture Library. I still have a few of the latter, with colour art work on the covers and black-and-white illustrations inside.

Typically, you have Marshal Price Regan maintaining law and order in a small town called Saddle Rock, Colorado, and doing a good job of it too. His problems, however, don’t lie within the town, which is eyeing its own county, as much as they do with the three neighbouring ranches—Rocking C owned by Cole Weston, Broken Ring belonging to the Mohawk brothers, and Bridlebit run by family man Red Sanders. Their spreads are located on either side of the Yellow Cat Creek which empties into Elk River.

The biggest spread of them all is Weston’s Rocking C that stretches for miles to the south, on the other side of the river. Being the first cattleman to occupy the vast land near Saddle Rock, Weston also behaves like he is the law of the land.

The three ranch owners, in cahoots with politically inclined banker Barry Madden, are bent on running poverty-stricken settlers out of Yellow Cat, particularly the very crooked and ugly faced Walt Cronin who is accused of stealing their cattle. Cronin manages a store and saloon that caters to the harmless settlers who are mostly into farming. 

Weston, who has gunslingers protecting his back round the clock, is the de facto ring leader and the most evil of the lot, though the Mohawk brothers, Tom and Joe, offer him stiff competition. Weston and Madden “order” Regan to get rid of Cronin and the other nesters and rustlers failing which they would settle the matter their way. And they do just that, as Regan refuses to do their bidding until he has strong evidence against Cronin and the others.

The Lone Deputy is the frontier story of a lone man who must fight a lone battle against the wealthy and powerful ranchers. All Price Regan has on his side are his badge and his gun, his conscience, an indomitable spirit, and his girl Laura Madden. Perhaps, they are more than enough for the brave marshal of Saddle Rock.

“With no more backup than his shadow, Regan would fight for what he knew was right—even if it meant gunning down every last one of Weston’s hired killers.” 

Wayne D. Overholser (1906-1996), author of more than seventy western novels and winner of the Spur Award as well as the Western Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award, has written a classic western adventure. The 189-page western novel is a pleasant read, on account of the author’s simple narrative style and a credible story that gives you both sides of frontier justice.