My friend Elizabeth just emailed me this: Quote of the day (NYTimes) from Martin Amis: "He didn't want
to please the readers. He wanted to stretch them until they twanged."
I love this. Don't try to please your readers, respect them, but don't pander. It's okay to make them nervous and uncomfortable. Let them twang.
The silence of this blog has been due to the holidays hurtling toward us, final classes and student papers, a copy edited manuscript for my new book waiting (lurking) in my computer for me to go through it word by word, comma by comma, plus the in-progress book proposal for my next book, etc. etc. But this question for you today as I read through my students' work: Where's the emotional center to your essay/chapter/poem? That's what I'm looking for this week as I read through hundreds of pages of their writing. I'm also cutting and paring down their words. Look at your own work right now. What can be cut? What needs to stay? How many of your adjectives and adverbs are just literary frou frou?
(Pictured above: my friends Elizabeth and Nicholas talking to Monica Holloway after she spoke in class last week; students Alex and Shermaine in the background.)
