![apoetreflects:
“How did it happen that [one] can write two bad novels and then a third which is a great deal better [one that is accepted by the first publisher to see it and then goes on to win the National Book Award for Fiction]?
This is an interesting question, one which, however, I do not pretend to be able to answer. I can only report that something did happen and it happened all of a sudden. Other writers have reported a similar experience. It is not like learning a skill or a game at which, with practice, one gradually improves. One works hard all right, but what comes, comes all of a sudden and as a breakthrough. One hits on something. What happens is a period of unsuccessful effort during which one works very hard—and fails. There follows a period of discouragement.
Then there comes a paradoxical moment of collapse-and-renewal in which one somehow breaks with the past and starts afresh. All past efforts are through into the wastebasket; all advice forgotten. The slate is wiped clean. It is almost as if the discouragement were necessary, that one has first to encounter despair before one is entitled to hope. Then a time comes when one takes a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper and begins. Begins, really for the first time.”
—Walker Percy, “From Facts to Fiction” in Signposts in a Strange Land, edited by Patrick Samway (The Noonday Press, 1991)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2gwopELpN1qe0r71o1_r1_500.jpg)
“How did it happen that [one] can write two bad novels and then a third which is a great deal better [one that is accepted by the first publisher to see it and then goes on to win the National Book Award for Fiction]?
This is an interesting question, one which, however, I do not pretend to be able to answer. I can only report that something did happen and it happened all of a sudden. Other writers have reported a similar experience. It is not like learning a skill or a game at which, with practice, one gradually improves. One works hard all right, but what comes, comes all of a sudden and as a breakthrough. One hits on something. What happens is a period of unsuccessful effort during which one works very hard—and fails. There follows a period of discouragement.
Then there comes a paradoxical moment of collapse-and-renewal in which one somehow breaks with the past and starts afresh. All past efforts are through into the wastebasket; all advice forgotten. The slate is wiped clean. It is almost as if the discouragement were necessary, that one has first to encounter despair before one is entitled to hope. Then a time comes when one takes a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper and begins. Begins, really for the first time.”
—Walker Percy, “From Facts to Fiction” in Signposts in a Strange Land, edited by Patrick Samway (The Noonday Press, 1991)
There is a somewhat crazy number of boxes in our basement right now due to World Book Night, which is suddenly almost here!
(Don’t worry, they’ll be stashed behind the curtains before tonight’s event.)
I will be among the authors giving away books at this event next weekend at Word. Looking forward to it.
“Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.” — Herman Melville, Moby Dick
The Significant Objects book, to which I contributed, is now available for pre-order.
“Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive.” — Ellery Channing to Thoreau, according to Wikipedia.
“I think the artist, even more than government, has become the one who is doing long-term thinking about what’s happening, what are the implications, what are we doing to ourselves?” — The money quote from my interview with Douglas Rushkoff, over at Fast Company’s Co.Create.
“If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men—you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.” — Thomas Merton
The Kobo I bought with my Amazon gift card balance is here.
My meager rebellion against Amazon, which has delisted my book in its contract dispute with IPG, continues to get coverage. First from Melville House and GalleyCat, and now from the Chicago Sun-Times and Shelf Awareness.
I’d especially like to thank WORD bookstore in Brooklyn and Changing Hands in Tempe, both of which are featuring my book as a result of the dust-up. I’ve never even been to Tempe! (Though I was born in Tucson.)
Ha. This amuses me.
“Next I blew my entire Amazon gift card balance on — and this is the delicious part — a Kobo Touch eReader. That’s right. Amazon doesn’t handle these directly, of course, but you can spend gift card balances with Amazon merchants, which is how I was able to buy the Kobo. It should arrive in a week and then, as a reader at least, I’ll be Amazon-free.” — Now that my book has been delisted — thanks to a contractual dispute between Amazon and IPG — I’m kicking the Amazon habit.
“I don’t want to make any heated edicts or promises I can’t keep, but Amazon seems bent on forcing me to reconsider my agnosticism. I note all this, despite the fact that it exposes me as less than ideaologically pure, because I want to warn Amazon how they are alienating content producers — even friendly ones — bit by bit.” — Wherein I get caught in the Amazon fray and am forced to reconsider my agnosticism.
I just finished writing a three-part series about social TV for Fast Company’s new Co.Create site. Here are the three parts:
Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan. (Suggested by http://exygoddess.tumblr.com )
Brian is feeding descriptions of literary characters into a police-sketch-generator and tumbling the results. This is Sam Spade.
A bunch of stuff going on this week: