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Soul Windows On the act of writing: “Fiction is work.” -- Barry Hannah, in “Why I Write,” Writer’s Yearbook 1999
“I have rewritten every word - often several
times -
I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." -- E. L. Doctorow “Short stories are akin to jokes. They must make their move at a certain moment to work.” -- Robert Stone, in a seminar
“None of us
can teach the other of us how to write. No one can teach us how to love.
One can buy those manuals about placing that part of your body
here, so your lovemaking partner can place her whatchamacallit thus -- but, so very obviously, you cannot get her to love you that way, and
neither of you may be able to sleep with gladness afterward. Technique
is so very far from love; narrative passion is the same long distance from
craft.” -- Moments in fiction:
“It’d be a
hard life if we never got more than we deserved.” --
“I had a high school friend
who died in a plane crash when he was working on a trail crew for the Forest
Service. Sat next to his bed down at the Seattle Burn Center and
he told me about flying into the narrow pass when the clouds closed in and
how the pilot tried to steer a compass course to the other side. He
talked about the engine easing back slightly as the pilot considered banking
and heading out and about the weird feathered ticking the prop seemed to
make as they cut through the fog and then the treetops, bombing the floats,
and the one loud crunch as the undercarriage of the plane was torn away and
the mossy rocks at the top of the pass spun up in his face. The rest
he didn’t remember, except the quiet of the engine being off and the rumble
of flames.” -- (More passages and lyrical phrases from authors Noreen admires will occasionally be posted here. The images these writers offer are so precise it's microsurgery performed on our imaginative vision. We are made wiser and richer by their hard-wrought efforts.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Noreen holds a Master's
degree in Literature and Language Arts from Cal-State at
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