Anne Lamott has a new book out, a book on writing. Her main observation is that writing should not sound literary. If it "sounds lyrical," it's bad writing. The hard work is to *sound* conversational, while conveying deep thought. Can you hear me calling out your name? You know that I'm falling, and I don't know what to say. I'll speak a little louder, I'll even shout-- You know that I'm proud, and I can't get the words out. My personal obsession is with song lines in which a speaker interrupts herself and reverses course. "If I was a sculptor -- but then again, no -- a man who makes potions in a traveling show...." Christine McVie includes *two* versions of herself: the bold exhibitionist and the suffering wallflower. This is a way of signaling an internal conflict. Something's happening...happening to me. My friends say I'm acting peculiarly. Come on, baby; we better make a start. You better make it soon before you break my he...
We might not often think of Snoopy having a dialogue with Virginia Woolf, but in 1973, the "conversation" occurred. Woolf famously wrote that a female artist should have a room -- a "room of one's own." She was speaking in a figurative way -- but, also, she was not. She was (at least partly) being literal. One should have a room of one's own. Jane Austen's nephew observed that Austen would write in a very public sitting room -- when guests visited, Austen would hide her manuscript under blotting paper, so she wouldn't have to engage in chit-chat about the very strange work that she was attempting. Alice Munro confessed that -- in young motherhood -- she would push her daughter's fingers away from the keyboard, so that she could continue to make progress. (This story has new resonance after the recent Andrea Skinner revelations.) By contrast, Snoopy has a man-vs.-nature problem. You can't write in the dark. "You can't write by firefly...