On Writing

Been taking a break from the aggressive story/poetry writing... In lieu of this, I have been reading an excellent guide on fiction writing. It is called the "Modern Library Writer's Workshop" by Stephen Koch. It's a book about the process of writing, how writers do what they do... It is supported by an unbelievable amount of research, the writing process as described by the writers themselves (or their reluctant family and friends). Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morisson, Stephen King, Charles Dickens...

The insights of this book are great. I'd recommend it to anyone trying to write short fiction or novels.

Previously, I felt that "Writing Down the Bones" was the best guide. But that book is essentially about free-writing, and bypassing the internal censor. Important stuff, but that hardly gets you to the nitty gritty of PLOT, CHARACTER, etcetera... It could be sufficient if you are trying to find seeds for POETRY. But for prose, you need a minimum of structure and organization, and for that, you can't just "stream-of-consciousness" your way through.

Some valuable insights:
*(From the cover): "Make [your] characters want something right away- even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time." -Kurt Vonnegut

*Stories are basically about conflict. Characters should be forcefully flung into conflict, not lollygag about as "innocent bystanders." There is nothing "innocent" in a story, nor should anything "stand by." Conflict, conflict, conflict.

*A basic problem of all memoir type/autobiographical type "fiction" is, paradoxically, not that the narrative is too self-absorbed. Quite the opposite. The author often hasn't developed the character of the self enough in the story, such that he/she becomes thoroughly ambigious (read:boring), and thus so does the entire story itself, of which s/he is the (absent) center.