- 138 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
At the beginning of a new writing projectâwhether it's the first page of a new novel or a less ambitious project, writers often experience exhilaration, fear, or dread. For Kristjana Gunnars, the call of a new project is "like someone you don't know knocking on your doorâyou either choose to let the person in or not. It's both exciting and dangerous to start a new manuscript." This book is an engagement with that "stranger" called writing.
Creative or imaginative writing is a complex process that involves more than intellect alone. Writers make use of everything: their sensibilities, history, culture, knowledge, experience, education, and even their biology. These essays seek out, and gather into a discussion, what writers have said about their own experiences in writing. Although the writers are from around the world and of very different backgrounds, the commonality of their remarks brings home the realization that writers everywhere are grappling with similar problemsâwith the seemingly simple problems of when, where, why, and what to write, but also larger questions such as the relationship between writer and society, or issues of privacy, appropriation, or homelessness. While none of these questions can be definitively answered, they can be fruitfully discussed.
Originating as questions posed in creative-writing seminars, these essays have grown into companion texts for both writers and readers who want to participate in a conversation about what writers do.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- 1 The Art of Solitude
- 2 The Diasporic Imagination: Writersâ Perspectives
- 3 The Home and the Artist
- 4 Transcultural Appropriation: Problems and Perspectives
- 5 Theory and Fiction: The Mixed Bag of Postmodern Writing
- 6 Writing and Silence: The Unteachable Mystery of Words
- 7 On Writing Short Books
- 8 Poetry and the Idea of Home
- Notes
- Works Cited