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...]
I saw the Julie & Julia movie yesterday. Julia Child’s fearlessness, her joyful energy and passion, drove her to success. Author Annie Dillard doesn’t hold back either. Isn’t interesting how often good writing advice makes good life advice, too?
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.” –Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
[read on...]
The road to a complete written piece is rarely smooth and straight from beginning to end. It’s bumpy; there are detours and dead ends; and your windshield is more likely than not to get muddy. Instead of freaking out when the end is not in sight, how about enjoying the ramble? Take side trips and wander down roads you’ve never tried before. You never know. They might just take you where you need to go. Embrace your wanderlust. [read on...]
In the midst of puzzling and fretting over a writing issue the other day, I remembered for the zillionth time that writing is a metaphor for living. And so I decided: keep on puzzling and stop fretting. [read on...]
Mary Ann de Stefano
