Comments on: On Finishing

By: Tanya Grae

Tanya Grae — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:53:34 +0000

Your thoughts are strong medicine. I’m sitting here excited to revisit the half-finished work tucked away in drawers — and my process. I hadn’t realized the way I in which I write (when, where and with what) could be impacting the quantity of work I produce. Unfinished pieces occupying real estate, in both my mind and files, need closure allowing new work to come.

The new site looks great…all my best!

By: Mags

Mags — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:36:41 +0000

Enjoyed reading this, and seeing Deaver, Lilly, and Kessler on my computer screen. Have wanted for a long time to ask if you'd read the poetry volume Stumbling In The Bloom by John Pass. He is a friend of a friend of mine, and won, I believe, the top prize in Canada for this volume of poems. I liked them a lot.

My best...say hello to Susan, to Russ, and share this suggestion, too, if you will.

Pat James

By: Brie

Brie — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:39:54 +0000

1) I love Urban Think! They handled all of the sales for the SCBWI conference today.

2) It's funny that you should bring all of this up. On the very day you were typing this post, Gary Schmidt (_Wednesday Wars_)was telling writers at a conference in Arkansas the very same thing. Like you, he thinks that things are too easy and too final on a computer. He says writing is work, should be work. Gary realizes this maxim through his recursive process. He revises as he works, such that he has revisited and rewritten the first chapter ten times or so by the time he types what he thinks will be the last word. And he admits that this means that he works at a slower pace. Gary went on to say that he writes all of his novels on a typewriter and only types them on the computer once the draft is his very best out-the-door-to-the-editor-to-meet-the-contract version. Anyway, this all affirms your ponderings on typewriters and writing as a process. The writing program was Teachers as Writers (http://www.smartstepliteracylab.org/id15.html) and I led one of the evening writing workshops. It was a wonderful week :) Hope that all is well with you.

PS- I love to hear and listen to "the steady click clack ding zing bang" of a typewriter in an otherwise quiet room. We didn't have a computer until the second half of my senior year of high school.