Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Bellow: "Live like a writer"

This is topic Bellow: "Live like a writer" in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by WraithOfBlake (Member # 9027) on :

What do members think of this turn of phrase--that seemed popular a few years ago in books about writing?

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From a selection of Saul Bellow's letters in the current THE NEW YORKER, "Among Writers" [...this because LETTERS: SAUL BELLOW, ed. by Benj. Taylor, is to "be published in the fall"...]. Here's quotes from two of em (all of which touch specifically on writing, btw). http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_bellow

To Dvd. Bazelon, 1948

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[...]I wanted to write before I had sufficient maturity to write as "high" as I wished and so I had a very arduous and painful apprenticeship and still am undergoing it.
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To Arno Karlen, 1961

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[At the Writer's Conference at Wagner College, Staten Island...a]n odd tightness or hardness came over you when they criticized you. I saw my own pale face twenty years ago[......]I can't believe that you'd really think there was more to say than, To be a writer one learns to live like one.
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[This message has been edited by WraithOfBlake (edited April 24, 2010).]

Posted by babooher (Member # 8617) on :

I suppose it could be worse.

I find this to be almost so subjective as to be meaningless. Live like which writer? The one who plods on day by or or the fitful scribe who is barren for 9 months only to give birth to a novel in a single vomitous weekend?

I'd prefer to simplify and say "Write."

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

WraithOfBlake, please remember Fair Use.

Posted by rstegman (Member # 3233) on :

Like OSC once said

"if you write, you are a writer. If you are not talented, you will not get published as often, or at all" - Orson Scott Card.

Posted by WraithOfBlake (Member # 9027) on :

Although, as Wikipedia says, "fair use" allows for limited quotation from copyrighted material for "commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship," I'd hate to think Bellow's estate or THE NEW YORKER would prefer his letters not to be quoted past a line or two at Hatrack Writers Workshop so I've edited my post above accordingly.

[This message has been edited by WraithOfBlake (edited April 24, 2010).]