January 30, 2015 Leave a Comment

Join Me for Conversation on the Craft of Storytelling

Sing, O Muse!

Imagine this. A fresh cup of hot coffee or your favorite tea (I’m an Irish Breakfast man in the morning, Earl Grey in the afternoon), and you and I sitting for a comfortable spell having a good auld natter about things literary. No big agenda. Just the pleasure of talk about our favorite books and writers, the practical aspects of writing fiction (or drama or screenplays), and matters of technique and, even more, artistry.

As we talk, I’m likely refer to topics such as Flannery O’Connor’s thoughts on the craft of story writing, or the modernist technique of free indirect speech, or Muriel Spark’s art of the “flashforward.” And I’ll be sure to mention the work of other writers I admire, such as that of Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse, Jane Austen and Walker Percy.

And I’m sure you’ll want to make a few contributions as well.

Now doesn’t that sound like a enjoyable way to sharpen your sense of, the craft of storytelling?

I think it does, too. Unfortunately, although I’d be glad to pay for the tea, I cannot circumnavigate the globe on a regular basis in order to enjoy such discussions with you. But I can offer this…

The Comic Muse Email Newsletter: a bi-weekly missive delivered to your Inbox absolutely free of charge and featuring a brief (7 minutes) podcast in which I offer a literary topic for our mutual delight and discussion. All you have to do is pour yourself a cup of your preferred beverage, kick back, and enjoy!

All podcasts are exclusive to subscribers.

The Comic Muse Email Newsletter also offers links to compelling content from the world of literature, film, TV, and drama.

But how is this is a conversation?

It’s not, not until you chip in with your thoughts. That’s the whole point: for us to engage with one another. All you have to do is email me back and let the conversation begin. Or use the com boxes here at danielmcinerny.com, or launch a 140-character literary salvo directly at my Twitter account (@danielmcinerny). And who knows? Perhaps you’ll suggest a topic or question that I can put back out by email to the rest of The Comic Muse community, or package into a blog post for the reflection of the rest of the galaxy?

Why is it called The Comic Muse Email Newsletter?

Wonderful question. I call it so because the literary tradition I find most intellectually compelling and perennially delightful is one which sees the entire craft of storytelling as pointing to, as a kind of culmination, comic resolution.

Not necessarily “comedy” in the sense of knee-slapping, belly-aching guffaws (though I mean that, too). I mean “comedy” in the grand sense of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Shakespeare’s As You Like It, of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.

This is not to say that I don’t like tragedy or serious, even gravely dramatic stories. Not at all. It’s simply that I believe, even in this vale of tears, that comedy rather than tragedy always has the final word.

It’s also a matter of my literary temperament. I’m one of those writers who believes that the most serious matters are often most effectively treated in a comic mode.

Disagree? Well then, let’s talk about it!

Ready to let the revels begin? 

Sign up right here:

Sing, O Muse!

Subscribe to The Comic Muse Email Newsletter today and receive a digital copy of my short story, a post-apocalyptic dystopian romance entitled, “The Bureau of Myths.” Compliments of the chef! 

Thanks so much for your consideration. I can’t wait for our conversation to begin.

Filed Under: On Being a Writer, The Craft of Fiction
December 18, 2014 Leave a Comment

Story Structure and the Meaning of Life

It’s been a productive week. Yesterday the third book in my children’s Kingdom of Patria series, a Christmas novella entitled The Chronicles of Oliver Stoop, Squire Second Class: The Quest for Clodnus’s Collectibles, went on sale at Amazon. I had to take the book off-sale today, however, after discovering a small glitch that needed correction (Amazon/CreateSpace takes books off the shelves if they need to be reviewed again). But the glitch has been corrected and the book should be back on sale by tomorrow at the latest, and I’m very happy about that. (If you’d like a signed copy of the book, just drop me a line and I’ll mail you a signed nameplate sticker that you can post inside the book.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been using Scrivener to put together the digital version of the book. I hope to upload that to Amazon sometime tomorrow.

Back in November, some of you may have been following my series of posts on storytelling structure, The Happiness Plot. My original intent was to write 40-some short posts (approximately 300 words each) during November and, after some revision/addition, publish the ebook in early December priced at 99 cents. The press of business prevented me from achieving that goal, though I have far from abandoned the idea for the book. In fact, I’m back at the manuscript, and I believe, in the end, I will be publishing a better product than it otherwise might have been.

The point of The Happiness Plot is to help working writers, and just plain lovers of fiction, think more deeply about the meaning of stories. It’s odd. We live in a world that has turned quite skeptical about truth and meaning, yet every day countless writers around the globe (just notice how often #amwriting trends on Twitter) shackle themselves to their writing desks in an attempt to communicate something meaningful to their readers. Is all of this effort just a waste of time if there is no objective truth “out there”? Or does the telling stories hint at a deeper reality to human existence than many are willing to admit? In the book I argue that there is an intriguing relationship between story structure and the happiness that provides meaning for human life.

Among the ingredients I’ve been throwing into the stew of my thinking on this topic are the following books:

  • Robert McKee’s Story
  • Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos
  • James Woods’ How Fiction Works
  • Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction
  • Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry
  • Charles Taylor’s The Ethics of Authenticity
  • Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception
  • Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

I’m now aiming for a Christmas Day (or thereabouts) release for The Happiness Plot. My hope is that this little book, while getting into some meaty theoretical subjects, will also prove to be of great practical value for writers. 

Filed Under: On Being a Writer, The Craft of Fiction, Writing in an Apocalyptic Time Tagged: , , , ,
December 1, 2014 Leave a Comment

Exclusively for Subscribers: FREE Consulting

What are your writing plans for 2015? 

Looking to make a fresh start on an old project, or to begin something entirely new that you’ve been waiting to launch for some time? 

Or maybe you haven’t yet given a thought to 2015…?

For reasons both liturgical and professional, I am starting my 2015 business planning today. This is, after all, the beginning of a new year according to the Christian liturgical calendar. But I also want to use this month of December to engage in a much deeper reflection about the direction of my writing and of my business than I customarily do in the first few hours of January 1.

I would love it if you would join me–sharing your goals, projects, dreams, and links to helpful articles in the com boxes below.

And by way of helping you achieve your goals, today I’m offering, exclusively to new subscribers to The Comic Muse Email Newsletter, ONE FREE HOUR OF CONSULTING.

We can use this hour however you would like. We could–

  • Brainstorm a new project
  • Critique the direction of a current project
  • Get you introduced to the world of indie publishing
  • Chart some worthy, doable goals for 2015

The choice is yours.

To win this FREE HOUR OF CONSULTING, all you have to do is be the first one after I publish this post today to subscribe to The Comic Muse Email Newsletter.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do.

Can’t beat that on a CyberMonday.

In The Comic Muse Email Newsletter, which wings its way into your email Inbox absolutely free some 2-3 times per month, you’ll receive

  • Inspiration for your writing career
  • Bonus extras on the craft of storytelling not available on danielmcinerny.com
  • Links to all sorts of helpful writing articles and books
  • Behind-the-scenes access to what’s going on at Daniel McInerny Productions
  • More special offers of consulting for writers

What’s more, by subscribing to my newsletter you’ll also receive a free digital copy of my dystopian romance, “The Bureau of Myths.”

So don’t delay! Subscribe to The Comic Muse Email Newsletter right now!

Direct Me to the Muse!
Filed Under: Indie Author-Entrepreneur, On Being a Writer, Productivity, The Craft of Fiction Tagged: , ,
October 24, 2014 Leave a Comment

Maybe Writing Fiction Isn’t A Grand Enough Job For You?

All the sentences in Madame Bovary could be examined with wonder, observed Flannery O’Connor. And so she was right. It has been the better part of thirty years since I was first captivated by this:

“Once during a thaw, the bark of the trees in the barnyard was oozing and the snow on the roofs of the farm buildings was melting; she stood in the doorway, then went back inside for her parasol, brought it out and opened it. The sun shone through the iridescent silk, illuminating the white skin of her face with shifting patches of light. She smiled beneath it at the soft warmth of the day, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the taut moiré.”

The owner of that parasol is Emma Bovary, and Flaubert’s image (in Lowell Bair’s translation) of the winter sunlight streaming through the iridescent silk of the parasol and illuminating the skin of Emma Bovary’s face has stayed with me with nearly the same force as a personal memory.

An image can do that. A writer’s vivid presentation of the sensuous particulars of the world can become a permanent part of our imaginative furniture.

But you’re not interested in such mundane matters. You’ve got a book to write. A message to proclaim. A feeling to express. You have the zeal to communicate ideas, notions, social and political problems, issues. Dwelling too long upon images such as the one above from Madame Bovary strikes you as quaint, like watching the work of one of the colonial furniture craftsman down at Williamsburg. Exquisite, but of what significance?

“One of the most common and saddest spectacles,” continued O’Connor in the same essay (“The Nature and Aim of Fiction”), “is that of a person of really fine sensibility and acute psychological perception trying to write fiction by using those qualities alone. This type of writer will put down one intensely emotional or keenly perceptive sentence after another and the result will be complete dullness.”

The other day I was looking at a family all of whom had the identical skin tone. It was a distinctive tone, not exactly swarthy. The only comparison I could think to make was to the brown on a lightly toasted marshmallow. Or to the perfect Café au lait. Except that the brown of their skin was tinged with, well, orange…

All this went down into my Moleskine for who knows what future purpose. For this is where writing fiction begins and, in some sense, ends: with sensible particulars carefully observed and rendered with precision in words. Writing fiction is about concreteness.

Which reveals fiction to be a quite modest endeavor. “The fact is,” observed O’Connor, “that the materials of the fiction writer are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.”

So tell me: what is your favorite image from a work of fiction?

Filed Under: On Being a Writer, The Craft of Fiction Tagged: , , , ,
October 22, 2014 Leave a Comment

How to Make Money as An Author

To be honest, making money as an author couldn’t be easier.

Take the case of Anna Todd, the 25 year-old debut novelist from Texas featured today in the New York Times. The clock on Ms. Todd’s 15 Minutes of Fame began ticking when the prodigious piece of erotic fan fiction she began publishing last spring on Wattpad garnered an enormous worldwide audience. Entitled After, Ms. Todd’s book features Harry Styles, the real-life star of the British boy band One Direction–or, rather, a boy band heartthrob with the same name, band, and features as Harry Styles–in a “steamy” (quoth the Times) relationship with a college freshman. The results? A six-figure multi-book deal with Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books plus a tidy sale of the film rights to Paramount. The paperback version of the book appears in stores today as a 584-page epic with added and extended sex scenes.

So there you go. The recipe could not be more straightforward:

  1. Take aim at that healthy portion of the global populace which maintains a robust fantasy life
  2. Pander to that audience by concocting a romance plot in which romance is defined as “lots of sex”
  3. Include as one of the romantic partners a beloved celebrity (or a character with the same name and attributes as a beloved celebrity)
  4. Publish free daily installments to that purveyor of fine culture, Wattpad
  5. Sit back and wait for New York and Hollywood to call

You don’t even need a laptop or good grades in English. Ms. Todd wrote most of After on her smartphone without paying much attention to punctuation.

If you can’t follow these easy directions to success, then I have to say, Dear Author Hoping to Cash In on Literary Fame, there isn’t much hope for you.

Or maybe you’re finding yourself reluctant to copy the recipe of Chez Todd, though you’re not quite sure why. You got into the writing game to attract an audience, but you never thought you’d have to write erotica for teens, twentysomethings (and beyond) to get your mug in the Times. Something about all this just doesn’t sit well with you.

Perhaps Walker Percy put his finger on the problem when he wrote the following about the presence of erotica in contemporary fiction:

“The real pathology is not so much a moral decline, which is a symptom, not a primary phenomenon, but rather an ontological impoverishment; that is, a severe limitation or crippling of the very life of twentieth-century man [Ed. note--things are looking even more impoverished here in the twenty-first, Mr. Percy]. If this is the case and if this crippling and impoverishment manifests itself often in sexual behavior, the latter becomes the proper domain of the serious novelist” (“Diagnosing the Modern Malaise”).

For Percy, it’s one thing to write about sex as a form of ontological impoverishment, quite another as a way of amusing oneself in the midst of one’s poverty.

But it’s strange. As the Times reports, Ms. Todd has a loving military husband who supported her literary endeavors by encouraging her to quit her day job so that she could write full-time. So: loving husband, six-figure book contract, a film deal, fame. Why would Ms. Todd be experiencing any sort of impoverishment? What could possibly be missing from her life?

What’s missing, if Percy is right, is that she and others–perhaps including ourselves?–don’t have the foggiest notion of who we are and what we’re doing on this planet. Fantasy sex, money, a feature in the Times–such things can distract us from the questions about ourselves we find it impossible to answer. But soon enough the malaise will creep back in and that person looking back in the mirror will demand to know what it’s all about.

To tell the story of that person, we authors will need a very different kind of guide. Instead of How to Make Money as An Author, we’ll need a “how-to” book with a title such as, How to Make Money as An Author Writing Books Which Manifest the Truth of the Human Predicament to a World Which Has Forgotten What That Predicament Is.

Perhaps that is a book I will have to write.

 

The image above of Harry Styles is reproduced courtesy of Fiona McKinley via Wikimedia Commons under the following license.

Filed Under: Art and Culture, On Being a Writer, Writing in an Apocalyptic Time Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
October 11, 2014 1 Comment

Flannery O’Connor, “Writing Short Stories”

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“For the writer of fiction, everything has its testing point in the eye.” –Flannery O’Connor, “Writing Short Stories”

Today The Comic Muse Podcast returns with a short introduction to Flannery O’Connor’s marvelous essay, “Writing Short Stories,” from her posthumous collection, Mystery and Manners.

In this audio hors d’oeuvre, you’ll hear

  • O’Connor’s definition of “story”
  • Whether O’Connor approached her writing as a “plotter” (someone who outlines everything before proceeding) or a “pantser” (a seat-of-the-pants writer who concocts fiction one sentence at a time)
  • About the genesis of O’Connor’s hilariously disturbing short story, “Good Country People”
  • O’Connor’s insistence that fiction operate through the senses
  • How the writer’s judgment, his sense of the mystery of existence, operates through vision

I hope you enjoy the podcast and that you’ll continue the discussion in the com boxes here at danielmcinerny.com or directly to my email at [email protected].

 

Filed Under: Catholics and the Arts, On Being a Writer, The Comic Muse Podcast, The Craft of Fiction Tagged: , , , ,
July 10, 2014 1 Comment

Digital Platforms for Writers: A Master Class with J.K. Rowling

The other day in the New Republic Esther Breger proclaimed J.K Rowling’s latest short story, the first glimpse she has given us of Harry Potter since the publication of Deathly Hallows seven summers ago, a “marketing scam.” This is utterly to misunderstand what savvy authors of fiction are trying to do today in building digital platforms for their writing.

Yes, Rowling has proved that she has a keen marketing sense. Anyone smart enough to retain the digital rights to her books, as she did, deserves an A-double-plus in 21st-century Digital Publishing. But what Berger fails to appreciate is the way in which Rowling’s story–a vignette, really, written from the point of view of gossip columnist Rita Skeeter, about the reunion of members of Dumbledore’s Army at the 2014 Quidditch World Cup–is part of an entire world that Rowling has been building now for at least two years on Pottermore, an immersive, RPG (role-playing game) experience for Potter fans. Rowling has written a good deal of other original material for Pottermore in the past couple of years. The story she published the other day is unique only in that Harry Potter himself features in it. And sure, Rowling looked to exploit as much as possible the buzz such a story would create. But that doesn’t make the story a “marketing scam.” This new story is not an isolated scrap of meat intended to stir the blood of Potter fans and get them to buy more Potter-themed stuff (again, not that selling stuff is not part of Rowling’s equation). It is, rather, one more entry in a much larger online experience.

Pottermore, in fact, sets the gold standard, at least in the children’s market, for digital platforms for writers. Drawing one’s audience deeper into one’s fictional world with short pieces, if only vignettes and backstory, is a key strategy that authors are using both to develop their worlds and meet the demands of their audience. This isn’t scamming anybody; this is actually a fun and useful way to write and to engage with one’s readers.

Any author, traditionally or self-published, should take Pottermore as a master class in how to build a 21st-century digital platform. Those looking for a more introductory lesson should go here.

 

The image above is reproduced courtesy of Pottermore.

Filed Under: Indie Author-Entrepreneur, On Being a Writer Tagged: , , , , , , ,
July 1, 2014 2 Comments

Writing Goals and Writing Tasks

As opposed to a set of vague and far-reaching goals and ambitions (“I’d like to write a novel that will sell a gajillion copies!”), good execution depends upon linking goals to a small set of highly-specific, well-defined tasks with a clear idea of the means necessary to accomplish them (“I’m going to write 1,000 words today on the train in my moleskine notebook because I’m going to be away from my laptop.”).

Thus as I look ahead into the second half of 2014 I’m going to resist making a list of all the things I would love to write in the coming months. Of course I would love to write a novel, a screenplay, a stage play, short audio plays, a new Patria novel, etc. etc. It’s all too easy to make such lists, and even easier to forget all about them. So I’m going to concentrate simply on this month of July in which I would like to finish 1 literary short story as well as write no less than 20,000 words toward the next Kingdom of Patria novel. Breaking these goals down into daily tasks looks like:

  • no less than 500 words per writing day toward a literary short story, working every other writing day until the draft is done; then into revision mode
  • no less than 800 words per day toward next Kingdom of Patria novel

On any given day, of course, these tasks will have to be broken down into even smaller ones: “Given that I finished the draft of the short story yesterday, I’m going to let it “cool” for a few days while I devote 1,000+ words per day to the Patria novel.” (I hope this day comes soon!)

How, then, are you distinguishing between writing goals and writing tasks?

Filed Under: Indie Author-Entrepreneur, On Being a Writer Tagged: , , ,
June 30, 2014 1 Comment

Halftime! So How is My Writing Year Going?

On January 1st of this year I published this post with my writing resolutions for 2014. Today is June 30, the halfway point in the year, so it’s a good time to assess how well I’m doing following through on my resolutions.

Where I’ve Failed

In the January 1 post I listed several projects I aimed to pursue. My Number 1 goal was to create more content. The first item on the list was a trio of comic mysteries based upon characters in my novel, High Concepts. I spent a lot of time working on these stories in the first and second quarters of the year, completing drafts of the first two and parts of two different approaches to the third story. In the end, and for more than one reason, I just wasn’t happy with how things were going and ultimately decided not to go forward with them. Such dead-ends are natural enough, I suppose, but I can’t help feeling frustrated with all the (apparently) wasted time and effort. Sometimes I think I depend too much on feeling in assessing whether a story is working or not. Yet at the same time, I felt there was something forced in my approach to these stories. Maybe in time I will return to them but I have no plans to do so at present.

In other project abandonment news, I also decided to abandon a prequel to my Kingdom of Patria children’s series which I spent a good deal of effort on in 2013. It was a good decision in the end, but again, I’m frustrated by the time and energy lost.

I further dabbled in writing a one-act play for audio but did not commit to it decisively enough.

Generally, I change my mind overmuch about what projects I will pursue. On my January 1 list, for example, was a novel for adults. I flirted with a beginning of such a project but without real commitment. I can see in my datebook for May 23 a fresh list of new projects, a list I had abandoned almost as soon as I had written it down.

So clearly one of my biggest failures is being all over the place in terms of the project(s) I’m absolutely committed to.

In the second quarter of 2014 I also was not as consistent as I would like to have been in writing every day. I need to recommit to that goal today. This postfrom The Daily Beast, “How I Wrote 400K Words in A Year,” as well as this post on my New Year’s Writing Regimen, serve as a good, swift kick in the pants.

Where I’ve Succeeded

a. Works Published

On April 23 I published a play, The Actor. Writing drama was one of chief goals for 2014.

On June 16 I published a post-apocalyptic short story with a comic-romantic twist, “The Bureau of Myths.”

b. Developing My Digital Platform at danielmcinerny.com

On May 12 I committed to blogging at danielmcinerny.com every day. While I haven’t posted absolutely every day since then, I have posted much more regularly and I’m glad to report that the number of page views on the site has doubled from May to June. My email subscriber list has also been increasing more regularly in the last several weeks. The list receives an email newsletter from me once per month. (If you’d like to join the list, just go to the email signup form on the homepage of danielmcinerny.com.) In January I thought I would also develop a podcast but that idea is on hold for the present.

c. Developing My Platform as a Public Speaker

On May 17 I spoke at the IHM Maryland Homeschooling and Parent Conference in Mt. Airy, Maryland: “Children’s Literature, Catholicism, and the Golden World.”

On June 20 I spoke at the IHM National Homeschooling and Parent Conference in Fredericksburg, Virginia: a revised version of the Maryland talk. At both conferences Trojan Tub Entertainment maintained a booth in the vendors’ area. I sold a good number of books at the Fredericksburg conference, especially, which has helped make June 2014 my biggest sales month ever across all my titles.

In 2014 I’ve also appeared on Sheila Liaugminas’s radio program, “A Closer Look,” twice (the first having to do with The Actor and the second having to do with children’s literature and my Kingdom of Patria series), and on my friend Karen Hornsby’s radio program, “Wake Up! Lousiana” twice.

I have one speaking engagement scheduled for October at Villanova University. In the fall I plan on pursuing many more readings at schools and public libraries.

Where I’ve Changed My Mind

In January this site was still called The Comic Muse, but it wasn’t long before I decided that my own name was a better title for my platform and so I changed the name and asked my illustrator, Ted Schluenderfritz, to revise the banner on the site accordingly.

Also, in January I was looking to make what is now danielmcinerny.com the hub of an online community of Catholic writers. Though I am happy to identify myself as a Catholic author and am delighted by the presence of Catholic writers who have joined my subscriber list, I changed my mind about how I want to profile my platform. Now I’m interested in taking an approach to writing that is certainly inspired by the Catholic tradition but which is not exclusively focused on explicitly Catholic things. This is itself a Catholic position. For given a Catholic understanding of the goodness of the natural order, it makes perfect sense that a concern with the natural principles of storytelling will reflect what is ultimately a Catholic understanding of the good, the true, and the beautiful. This doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes blog about Catholic things or that my writing doesn’t reflect my beliefs. It’s simply that I want to find as much common ground with non-Catholic writers and even non-religious writers as I can.

Tomorrow I’ll let you know how I plan to proceed in the second half of 2014.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear how your own writing year is going. What are your successes and failures? How have you changed course? What have you learned?

Filed Under: Indie Author-Entrepreneur, On Being a Writer Tagged: , , , , , , ,
June 5, 2014 Leave a Comment

The Art of Focus for Your Writing

Tell yourself no email, no social networking, indeed no digital stimulation whatsoever (except perhaps for some music) for several hours while you concentrate on your work, and notice how your mind relaxes. The daily dog-paddle we do against the current of the digital sea is exhausting–and not nearly as stimulating as our habitually fractured consciousness wishes it to be.

In an article this week in the New York Times, “The Art of Focus,” David Brooks talks about an interview with child psychologist Adam Phillips that appeared in The Paris Review. From Phillips’s work with children Brooks gleans a principle to help combat digital distraction more effectively:

“The lesson from childhood, then, is that if you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say “no” to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say “yes” to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.”

The point is not not to say “no” to the trivial distractions. Regular digital fasts are necessary for the good of the soul. But in order to make that “no” easier to say we need to focus even more on the “yes” of the passion that brings us to our writing in the first place. That can be done in myriad ways. By re-reading something from a favorite author, or undertaking a long free-writing exercise to get back into the groove of composition. For me, a sustained period utterly focused on writing is enough to remind me of that writing is play and more interesting than anything on Facebook or a Twitter stream.

Brooks quotes Phillips as saying something else very interesting, that in order to pursue their intellectual adventures, children need a secure social base. Observes Phillips:

“There’s something deeply important about the early experience of being in the presence of somebody without being impinged upon by their demands, and without them needing you to make a demand on them. And that this creates a space internally into which one can be absorbed. In order to be absorbed one has to feel sufficiently safe, as though there is some shield, or somebody guarding you against dangers such that you can ‘forget yourself’ and absorb yourself, in a book, say.”

The loving parent is the best guardian of the absorbing play of the child. There is a spiritual analogue here, I believe, for the writer.

Filed Under: On Being a Writer Tagged: , , , , , ,
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