The Writer's Chapbook. George Plimpton, Ed.

The Writer's Chapbook
George Plimpton, Ed.
New York: Viking
1989

Why read it? A chapbook is a short book with short entries. The Writer's Chapbook is a book by writers on writing. The topics include the following: What is a writer? How to write a novel. Why poems are difficult to read. How writers write. And the characteristics of good writing. If you write as part of your profession or responsibilities or even if you are simply interested in writing, the ideas in this book will give you opportunity to reflect on the process and product of writing.

Sample ideas from the book:
Thomas Mann: A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Anais Nin: The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. James Baldwin: Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance. E.L. Doctorow: How do you know what you know until you've written it? William Kennedy: Character [in writing] is equivalent to persistence.... You just refuse to give up. Philip Larkin: One reason for writing, of course, is that no one's written what you want to read. EB White: The writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Hemingway: We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. Margaret Drabble: I've often worried about this--if one got really very happy in life, one might not want to write at all. John Hersey: It may be that the mystery of creativity is among the things that attract those of us who write.

Somerset Maugham: There are three rules for writing the novel: unfortunately, no one knows what they are. John Irving: Didn't Faulkner say something like it was necessary only to write about the human heart in conflict with itself...? John Irving: When I read the poems of someone my own age and can't understand a single thing, is that supposed to be a failure of my education or the poetry? Carl Sandburg: I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. Conrad Aiken: I compelled myself to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year; didn't give a damn about the meaning; just wanted to master the form.

Truman Capote: When the yellow draft is finished, I put the manuscript away for a while, a week, a month, sometimes longer. Hemingway: You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. John Irving: I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. Robert Frost: Poems begin with an emotion, not a thought. Tennessee Williams: My work is emotionally autobiographical...no relationship to the actual events of my life but reflects the emotional currents of my life. Joan Didion: The last sentence in a piece should make you go back and start reading from page one. John Hersey: I recognize in the real world around me something that triggers an emotion, and then the emotion seems to cast up pictures in my mind that lead me towards a story. Bernard Malamud: Generally, I have the ending in mind, usually the last paragraph verbatim.

Quote: What are the characteristics of good writing? Robertson Davies: "...the ability to keep people wanting more. You cannot stop reading any of the great Russians."

Quote: Henry Miller: "I'm always looking for the author who can lift me out of myself."

Quote: Walker Percy: "But something keeps--or fails to keep--the reader reading the next sentence."

Quote: Hemingway: "So that after he or she has read something it will become a part of his or her experience and seems actually to have happened; very hard to do and I've worked at it very hard."