Topic: Writing Outings
Thursday 27July06 10:16pm
More notes from the International Festival of Author's in Toronto.
Jim Crace
He invented all the insects in his novel - Being Dead.
Penelope Lively
- the power of the dead over the living.
- the past is still there
- having characters do what you would like to do.
- anti-memoir - all the paths you did not take. the fork in the road - the path you didn't take, the forks that never happened
- we are all made by what we do - the work we go to each day.
Katherine Govier
Why artists are attracted to certain subjects
Audubon (artist) killed the birds in order to paint them
Emma Donoghue
We are repeating history in different ways
History was written about the winners.
Interested in stories about the nobodies
Economic facts at the time can help you to re-interpret the fairy tales.
the need to be brutally honest about your life.
historical fiction - going back in to the past to find some one left there - fossils of lives
follow up on interests immediately
John McGahern
repetition like prayers
cliches - handrails of speech
the secret lives of families
it's the private world that we read with
country we grew up in before we were twenty
writers write about what worries them
actions never forgot by people
labels that run through your families
the dead can be turned into anything
lost opportunities
pleasure was considered dangerous in anything
When we are younger - we feel oppressed by the world
when we are older - understanding is power and strength
honor your characters - allow them to exist in space and time
good writing is suggestion
bad writing is statement
thinking about the work is often more helpful than forcing yourself to write for more than a certain amount of hours
Art gives us our small resurrections
Immigrant - the place that didn't give you a living
Lo Fu
-theme of exile
-creativity rooted in cultural background
-looking for ways to express self surrealism
-Poetry is a dialogue between Gods and man
-going back to own tradition
-combines western technique with Chinese esthetics
-use of subconscious automatic writing - freeflow, stream of consciousness
-absurdity of destruction
-any art form is interrelated it depends on the technique you choose
-as an exile what is it that you are missing personally, culturally and universally
A.M Homes
- likes to look at the least likely character to do it
- what are we looking for when we consume what we believe to be fact?
- someone terrifying, repulsive and yet human
- there is no community memory
- shocking readers. touching something they don't want touched
- things can happen in a suburb that are different from in an urban center
- document and compress what is going on
- it's always somebody else's fault. We're not able to deal with the fall-out of what we create.
- what does nine inch nails sound like as a short story
- kids can't enjoy the normal rites of passage anymore ie. skipping school, stealing, We're too punitive now.
Kathryn Harrison
- a confessional writer no matter what I write
- obsession requires a lot of energy
- writing is an act of opening and owning something
- what happened before doesn't rewrite what has happened with me
- voicing what ought not to be said.
Lesley Glaister
- wrote during sons nap time
- the content dictates the form
- using the pressure to finish one book to get to the next interesting idea that feels more interesting than the one you are working on
- what labels appeal to you and what you reject
- How do they cope and make sense of the world
- There are so many things you can say but pick the one thing no one would pick. Be selective.
Douglas Coupland
What you do in your life you get from your mother, the way you do it you get from your father.
- an artist who has a showing at a gallery could never show the same type of art at their next showing two years later. How about trying that in writing? Doing something radically different with each novel.
Milton Hatoum
writing to preserve voice, memories, stories
Andrew Miller
- characters are fragments of the self blown large
- like witchcraft, you have to have one piece of a person in order to cast the spell. the same with characterization, you find one point of correspondence, a link that will bring you in as a writer.
- writing is like dreaming out loud.
- questions of faith, trust, belief
Larry Kramer
- that's what I saw and this is what I thought of it.
- write about things that make you mad that you want the world to know
- wanting to make people think
- how to make money with your anger
- embracing anger
- what is beyond comprehension?
- no community memory
- not doing the same thing twice in writing
EY
