Writing

“ Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line. ”

“ All the modern editions have, the law of wit, and the liberty; but both my old copies have, the law of writ, I believe rightly. Writ, for writing, composition. Wit was not, in our author's time, taken either for imagination, or acuteness, or both together, but for understanding, for the faculty by which we apprehend and judge. Those who wrote of the human mind distinguished its primary powers into wit and will. ”

“ The writing of essays and conversations, set in a framework of scenery and incident, and delineating character admirably though only incidentally, is the field of literature in which the author stands without a rival. ”

“ If, then, you assume the attitude of imaginative sympathy, and study your hero until you know what his particular life-problem was, what his type and what his individuality, and [Pg 285] with love and yet restraint make your estimate, aiming at truth to character and to facts of his life, you will produce writing that will be more than a mere scholar's document, writing that will warm the heart of your reader to a new personality and will be a friend of a winter evening fireside. ”

“ If, then, you feel like confidential writing, what may your subjects be? Essayists have written about three main classes of subjects: first always, people, their glory, their pathos, their sadness, and their whims; second, nature as it appeals to the writers in a personal way, reflecting their joys and sorrows, or contributing to their sense of pleasure, beauty, and companionship in the world; and third, matters of science, industry, art, literature, as the essayists think these affect the emotions of humanity. ”

“ Through writing, most things in life, and those the most useful, are accomplished--as ballots, epistles, laws, covenants. Who can sufficiently praise the learning of letters? ... Writing alone preserves the most brilliant utterances of wise men and the oracles of gods, nay philosophy and all culture. All these things it alone hands down to all future generations. Wherefore nature should be viewed as the source of life, but the source of living well we should consider the culture derived from writing. ”

“ One of the most clearly expressed and continually reiterated aims of prose fiction, as of other species of writing from time immemorial, was that of conveying to the reader a moral through the agreeable channel of example. ”

“ A first feeble effort toward the realization of the fundamental object of writing is to be seen in the custom—not infrequent at a certain period of culture, and even retained in occasional use among peoples of every grade of civilization—of sending along with a messenger some visible object, symbolical of his errand, and helping both to authenticate and to render it impressive. ”

“ Always, while writing—whatever might be the subject of my story—I have been influenced by an undercurrent of effort and desire to direct the minds and affections of my readers towards the higher life. ”

“ Let us keep in mind value, selection, subordination, proportion, emphasis, as a second group of terms for principles involved in writing. We may also wish to give our subject further elements of appeal through what may be suggested beyond the telling, through the melody and rhythm of the words, or through a quickening of the sense of the beautiful. Suggestion, melody, rhythm, beauty, are to be included, then, in a third group of qualities that may contribute to the effectiveness of what we write. ”

“ For the practice of poetical composition, while it cultivates the sentiment of beauty in thought and feeling, is probably the best of all exercises in the art of writing correctly, grammatically, and expressively. ”

“ In contrast with the orderly phenomena of speech and writing, which are amenable to scientific processes of examination and classification, and which take rank with the orderly successions of change in nature, we have what, for want of a more exact term, we call “mere literature,”—the literature6 which is not an expression of form, but an expression of spirit. ”

“ sketches too—he could do charming things, if only he had known how to finish them!—and, on the writing-table at his elbow, scattered sheets of prose and verse; ”

“ Where one author is cramped by a pen and hampered in the choice of the words that make writing the natural expression of thought, the other allows words and ideas to blend in interesting, amusing or touching homogeneity, always harmonious and always natural. ”

“ The great simplicity of your manner of writing, I may say of your mind, which appears in your writing, particularly suits the scientific sublime—which would be destroyed by what is commonly called fine writing. ”

“ One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case. ”

“ The characters,—not the author,—make the plot. Their personalities reveal themselves in action. The entire story is founded substantially upon life and appears as a photographic glimpse of reality.
As in all other writing, the greater the art of the writer in adapting style to thought, in using language effectively, the better production. Word-choice, power of phrasing, and skill in artistic construction count for as much in the short story as in any other type of literature. ”

“ It is supposed, that by the act of writing in verse an Author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association, that he not only thus apprizes the Reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. ”

“ The variety of subjects brought before the reader, the absence of deep thought or real principles, concealed by an attractive and brilliant style of writing, dissipate the mind, and gradually destroy, not only the habit, but even the power of serious reflection. ”

“ Body of the Story.—In writing the body of the story, the first thing to strive for is proper coherence with the lead. This caution is worth particular heed when the lead contains a single-sentence quotation, an indirect question, or a paragraph of direct statement from somewhere in the body of the speech. Few things are more incongruous in a story than a clever epigrammatic lead and a succession of quoted statements following, none of which exhibits a definite bearing on the lead. ”

“ Walk through the world with your eyes and ears closed, and embody the negative results in a story or a poem. As to Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally begin by writing verse, because verse is the last thing that the public want to read. ”

“ As we are now entering upon a book in which the course of our history will oblige us to relate some matters of a more strange and surprizing kind than any which have hitherto occurred, it may not be amiss, in the prolegomenous or introductory chapter, to say something of that species of writing which is called the marvellous. ”

“ To fully describe and depict writing as it is the wide world over in our civilised age, would require a volume of itself. Suffice it in this chapter to furnish an amount of description, testimony or evidence and illustration, as shall adequately exhibit the existing condition of things in the writing world. ”

“ It is so with learning to express your thoughts in writing. What is hard at first becomes “second nature” afterward. I have prepared some helpful rules and examples to aid you.
When writing a Story which you have read or heard, observe the following directions:—
1. Before beginning to write, think over the whole story, to make sure that you remember all the points, and the order in which they come.
Neglect of this direction may cause you to omit something or to put something in the wrong place.
2. Before beginning to write each sentence, arrange the whole of it in your mind. ”

“ It must be owned, you have fallen upon a manner of writing, in a series of Letters, which is very affecting, and capable of great improvements. It preserves a great probability in the narration, and makes every thing appear animated and impassioned. ”

“ Writing, and the reading of writing, is to be considered in the same way as gesticulation; it has the same alarming influence on voice and general appearance as the other, so that it is relatively indifferent whether a man speaks and acts or writes and thinks. ”

“ That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second. ”

“ But there may be times when you find that you can say what you mean better in a few words of verse than in many of ordinary prose, that you can express some aspect of out of doors, or some sensation, more vividly in verse than in any other way. You will notice that words seem often to have a greater force and life in poetry than in prose, and if you make use of this quality, you will be writing real poetry. ”

“ But the secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it. ”

“ AUTHOR’S PREFACE WRITING The arts of WRITING, ILLUMINATING, & LETTERING offer a wide field for the ingenious and careful craftsman and open the way to a number of delightful occupations. Beyond their many uses—some of which are referred to below—they have a very great educational value. ”

“ We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. ‘Life,’ for example, is quite out of its proper place. ”

“ You cannot expect great results from your verse making, but you will certainly profit by some practice in managing meters. You will have a greater interest in the construction of the poetry you read, you will have greater ease in writing prose, and you may perhaps succeed in expressing some feeling of your own in a simple stanza which will be worth writing for its own sake. ”

“ Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. ”

“ This exercise will improve, not only your skill in the art of writing, but also in the art of thinking, for those involved sentences are almost always the result of confused thoughts; the resolve to write clearly will compel you to think clearly, and you will be surprised to discover how often thoughts, which had appeared to you definite in contemplation, are found, when you come to set them upon paper, to be most incomplete and shadowy. ”

“ 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it —whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.'
But let me plead further that you have not been left altogether without clue to the secret of what Style is. ”

“ Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. ”

“ Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. ”

“ The comparison makes us suspect that the art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea. It is on the back of an idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and thus compelling words to its shape, that the diverse company which included Lamb and Bacon, and Mr. ”

“ Or, to use another illustration, writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it;—but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it." ”

“ that part about the wise writer writing for the youth of his generation, the critic of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterward." ”

“ Turning to prose, you may easily assure yourselves that men who have written learnedly on the art agree in treating our maxim—to prefer the concrete term to the abstract, the particular to the general, the definite to the vague—as a canon of rhetoric. ”

“ The vice goes so far, indeed, that you may divide literature into two great classes of books. The smaller class of the two consists of the books written by people who had something to say. They had in life learned something, or seen something, or done something, which they really wanted and needed to tell to other people. They told it. And their writings make, perhaps, a twentieth part of the printed literature of the world. It is the part which contains all that is worth reading. The other nineteen-twentieths make up the other class. ”

“ Certainly one quality which nowadays has been best forgotten—and that is why it will take some time yet for my writings to become readable—is essential in order to practise reading as an art—a quality for the exercise of which it is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a modern man!—rumination.
Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine,July, 1887. ”

“ The remainder of the technique of the short story, apart from the matter of creating real men and women, is not verbal, but constructive, and is implied in—as it results from—the brevity of the fiction. ”

“ If prevision and full elaboration of his basic idea are essential to the writer of a tale, they are doubly essential to the writer of a story, simply because a story is a whole and the result of careful co-ordination of parts. ”