Craft Lecture with No Craft
May
08
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| http://www.english.ohiou.edu/cw/slf_writer/1349 |
It's true: At the 25th annual Spring Literary Festival in Athens, Ohio, Padgett Powell essentially gave a lecture on craft with "no craft it in."
During his talk, however, there were some tidbits of advice to young writers, and he shared some funny anecdotes about Tennessee Williams and visiting Flannery O'Connor's cousin.
The tidbits: "No one can tell you how to write."
"Figure out your biases and those of other writers."
"Fiction must deliver what it intimates it will deliver."
"Know what you want your sentences to do."
"Writing is controlled whimsy."
" Remain loose."
"The big and necessary rule of writing: making sense."
Chew on those tidbits for a while. How do they taste?
And finally, a quote Powell shared from O'Connor, whom he refers to as the Goddess Head -- can't argue with that one:
When I told you to write what was easy for you, I should have said, what is possible for you.
1 comments:
Thanks for blogging about Padgett Powell's lecture Hayley; it was nice to see what you personally took from Powell's "Craft Lecture without Craft," as I thought it was one of the best of the festival. I thought then, and think now after seeing your compilation, that it was very astute of him to combine rules from other authors; I thought it was a nice homage to the authors that had inspired him, and certainly, a nod to the fact that so much is emulated, borrowed, and recreated in literature.
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