So I’m working on this piece. And I can’t seem to stop tinkering with it, even though I think it’s pretty likely the tinkering isn’t improving anything. How do I know when to stop rewriting? [read on...]
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So I’m working on this piece. And I can’t seem to stop tinkering with it, even though I think it’s pretty likely the tinkering isn’t improving anything. How do I know when to stop rewriting? [read on...]
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We amateurs think we have to wait for the big idea, the next scene, the next line, to arrive before we sit down to work. But the pros know the Muse sits in wait for us, gifts in hand, expecting us to show up and honor our intentions to write. [Read on...]
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Besides being MAD about Words, I’m mad about the movies. I often take The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, by Michael Ondaatje down off my bookshelf and read it again to feed my two obsessions. Murch is an Academy Award winning film editor who worked on “The Godfather” and many other great movies, including the “The English Patient,” based on Ondaatje’s book.
I can learn from Murch. I’m inspired when I realize how his editing decisions affected me, and I’m in awe that his work did not call attention to itself when I was first experiencing his films. [read on...]
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“Everyone who writes strives for the same thing. To say it swiftly, clearly, to say the hard thing that way, using few words. Not to gum up the paragraph. To know when to quit when you’ve done. And not to have hangovers of other ideas sifting in unnoticed. Good writing is precisely like good dressing. Bad writing is like a badly dressed woman — improper emphasis, badly chosen colors.” — William Carlos Williams [Read on...]
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