down the writer's path

Firing up WRITERS QUOTE DAILY

Sorry to be away so long. Reasons? The list is many, far too many to number here. Recently I've had a flare up of burning nerve pain around the right shoulder cap and brachial area, so I've pulled back from any computer work to see if it would help. Yes? A little, not as much as I would have hoped. But today I did manage to fire up WRITERS QUOTE DAILY and set the quotes going for the next several weeks. I'll be doing a little bit of clean up over the next day or so but the quotes will be coming.

And what is WRITERS QUOTE DAILY? Just a little blog where I drop in quotes about writing. Use them as food for thought, a writing prompt, or a reminder of why you do what you do.

Lee Goldberg, MJ Rose, Maud Newton, Bob Bly, David St. Lawrence and John Patrick continue to blog away

Lee Goldberg, a writer-for-hire for DIAGNOSIS MURDER and for MONK, is at it again with a little bit of dish and a whole lot of other interesting tidbits. One tip led me to Lynn Viehl's blog, The Paperback Writer, for an interesting post on writing for hire.

MJ Rose reports that blogger Mad Max Perkins has left the blogosphere. Over at Maud Newton's I found an interesting quote from Flaubert on the structure of a novel. Guess I've been caught in a dead calm. Bob Bly is still blogging and recently blogged about the effects of the Internet on writing and reading. Over at Ripples, David St. Lawrence opines about the future of blogging. And finally, John Patrick offers up an assessment of his recent publishing experience with his new book NET ATTITUDE. Which, I confess, surprises me a little. Patrick's main focus is technology. His site is not only informative, but his eclectic interests make for fun reading. Spend time doing a little blog-browsing.

"Weed out the lumber," says author David McCullough

The other night Tim Russert interviewed author David McCullough. Since I had been part of the Borders team working his Houston signing last week, I pulled up a chair and watched. The man loves his work: He leaned forward, his eyes sparkled, and a smile played across his lips as he began another story culled from his latest research. When the program ended, I googled around to see what else I could find on McCullough and ran across an interview with the NEH Chairman, Bruce Cole. When McCullough discussed his writing process, these words captured my attention. 

"I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?"--Historian David McCullough, author of 1776, in an interview in 2004 with Bruce Cole, NEH Chairman

What he says holds true for any type of writing, whether it's in the present or past. If you don't engage the reader, how can a writer ever hope to have the reader successfully disconnect from the real world and follow him or her down the writing path toward an experience that is rooted in word? Reworking a piece over and over in an attempt to create an experience of language that will capture the hearts and minds of the readers, that will center and ground them in the piece takes real work--and a passion for the subject. If there is a Santa Claus of history, I'm sure he's much like David McCullough: the man with a passion for the past, a twinkle in his eye, and a real gift for storytelling.