Randy Burgess's Blog (11)

Prepping for this semester's second writing class tonight at NYU, I got the idea that I should explain to my students that I think of the act of writing as not a single act, but as many acts falling into a few broad categories. In fact I came up with four such categories: audience, juice, craft, reading. These overlap, of course, so really they should be shown in a diagram rather than in a list as here. AUDIENCE Awareness of audience means you do all the activities listed here under the… Continue

I'm still picking my way through About Writing, by Samuel R. Delaney, in the astonished manner of a miner who carries only a very… Continue

Reading the excerpt below makes me think of how difficult yet rewarding it must be to peel and eat a durian, that strange fruit found only in southeast Asia, and guarded by not only a foul odor but a thick husk of thorns. The excerpt comes from an essay by the science fiction writer, literary critic, and teacher Samuel R. Delaney called "Of Doubts and Dreams." It's part of a collection of related essays by Delaney titled… Continue

What's it take to be a good writer? How about a strangely named skill called "reader sensitivity"? Taking my bad acting skills, even worse camera skills, and courage in hand, I've created 4 linked webcasts on this concept. I'm hoping to use these short videos to help writing students who come to me for individual lessons. Given that the videos are pretty rough and touch only a portion of what is a big subject, I would welcome comments & suggestions on how to make them better - you can priva… Continue

We've had a few posts on this site about the question of whether it's OK to "make things up" when you're writing nonfiction - specifically, memoir. Interestingly, at least one critically well-received travel writer thinks it is not only okay to make stuff up, it is a darn good thing. The writer in question is Sara Wheeler, author of such travelogues as Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica and… Continue

Art, whether written or plastic or performed, needs an audience; and some means must be created to let members of this audience know not only about artistic works, but about each other. Such genres as short stories and novels came into being only after markets were established that on the surface were commercial, but beyond that, were also social and cultural; that allowed sharing & discussion & the development & evolution of literary conventions: Jane Austen would not be known to us… Continue

In all the culture of enthusiasm about writing - reading how-to books, taking workshops and joining writers' groups, maybe even getting an MFA - there is surprisingly little talk about how damn hard it is for most of us. Not to write, but to get published. And not self-published. I mean, published "for real" - whether in a literary or consumer magazine, or by an actual publishing house. That's what most of still want. And when we can't get it, we ache. I experience this pain from both sides: as… Continue

I enjoy posting about writing I like on this network, so here's another entry of that sort. I'm following up on Jeff Davis's flagging of the James Agee essay "America, Look at Your Shame!" as a terrific essay to savor, get agitated by, or both. I didn't have a copy at hand so I took advantage of the spectacularly non-digital Ulster County library system to request a hard copy of an anthol… Continue

For the past month or two I have been dipping into the collection published in 1977 of "Essays of E.B. White." Before now I hadn't read very much at all of White except his children's books. The essays in this collection are variable, but some are quite funny, others quite lovely, still others a little of both. And some are very sad, especially when he writes - and this was back in the 1950s and 1960s in many cases - of the harm done by our chemicals and atomic weapons and the like to what was b… Continue

Brent mentioned DM's blog in his monthly email, so I went and checked it out at http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com/ Very cool. Very poetic (and I mean that in a non-Hallmark card kind of way), very political. On my list of blog sites now & recommended. Continue

I have been reading a review piece by Peter Conrad in the May 4 New Yorker (p. 69), about the Portuguese novelist Antonio Lobo Antunes. Apparently Lobo Antunes was a doctor when he was younger, and that led him to this experience early on in his writing career: Back in Lisbon, after the war, Lobo Antunes worked at a hospital that treated children with cancer. The experience provoked a metaphysical rage; he found himself railing against a God who permitted such agony. He watched as a five-… Continue