Friday, November 30, 2007

I haven't written anything good in a month.

It bothers me to write nothing I like.
It sucks to suck.

If I can't write anything good I can still be of use if I can point to writers who can.
Nabokov, Bellow, Helprin, O'Connor, Frost, I know you've heard those names.
Here are some I've been drawn to that aren't as widely appreciated:

1st, a few of the writers I read to learn how to write sentences:

Lee K. Abbott.
Texas. Football. Girls. Hubris. Divorce. Disappointment.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Speeches and writings. Oh my. Visuals. Writing meant to be spoken. Spoken words that live in the air. You want to write commercials on the TV you've got to write sentences people can see. Not even poets do it as well as he did.
Shalom Auslander. This is a book of short stories. He also just wrote a memoir. They read the same. God, profanity, self-disgust. It's like looking in a mirror.
Lynda Barry. Cartoonist & writer. I'm not much of a woman.
So when Ms. Barry is writing about the interior struggles of a young woman I should probably feel as if I don't get it.
I do, though.
The comic strip format can train your mind not only for sentences but for film sentences.
The word balloons and having to know what's being seen while somone is talking is crazy good for you.
Go look in the basement for your old ones. Read the Sunday paper.
Let this in as far as you can. Maybe you'll be lucky and it will unman you enough you'll pick up Emily Dickinson again.

Wendell Berry. Farmer. You can tell.
Heck, this could go on for pages, boring you into losing your interest in sitting down with just one writer and letting his or her cadences sound in your head.
But I can't say sentences without naming a few more.
Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, P.G. Wodehouse.
Wislawa Szymborska, Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver.
I have to stop.
Arrgh.
p.s. If you start with a Jeeves book by P.G. Wodehouse you'll be happy you did.