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“Is there too much emphasis on craft? In the way, in the way, in like what's valued among writers, in the way writers are taught, I feel like everything I see is about craft. And I'm like, craft is good, but that can just be like how you make a table rather than like how you make a house. Craft is not the guarantor of anything. And I see a lot of books where I think this person knows some craft. But as you say, they don't really have an application for it. And they don't. No one actually said to them, all style has a moral purpose, whether you're aware of it or not.”

Great quote. Also: I’m pretty happy writing with my Lamy Safaris and TWBI 580s, but am adding the Custom 743 to my dream pen list now, thank you!

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The Lamy Safari is such a great pen. Truly, one of the marvels of modern design. Those nibs are for people who actually WRITE things, lol. A perfect everyday pen.

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oh I might get one, I need a decent everyday pen

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I recommend. But also, never use their red ink. You will NEVER get it out of your pen.

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I use many colours, but I can't use red.

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Loved the "Really?!?!" after Taylor admitted to not loving Trifonov so much. I wonder if he's seen Trifonov live as I find his recordings are never as amazing as when I've seen him live (live he's absolutely amazing)

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Never seen him live but I think his recordings are just remarkable

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Fanny Price Booster Club! Count me IN!

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We are legion!!!!!

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to misquote slightly: "we were quiet, but we were not blind"

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This conversation was absolutely fantastic, I was laughing in the treadmill at the gym this morning! So much content and ideas for readings and re-readings. I was just hurt listening to Brandon saying that Johnathan Franzen is boring, but it’s ok , nobody’s perfect 😉

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Wasn’t he splendid!

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Great chat!

I don’t know if you take suggestions for future chats, but one person whom I quite like and who has helped me get more out of poetry is a fellow named Adam Walker. He runs a YouTube channel under the name “Dr. Adam Walker - Close Reading Poetry”. I think he would be a very interesting guest.

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This is a reflection I wrote to myself after reading Brandon Taylor, “I aim to revive the full potential of a novel.”

I no longer really want to be starting my books, quote unquote, in media res. I want my books to feel like books. I don’t want my books to feel like movies. And I don’t want them to feel like treatments for film. And so I want to sort of bring back all of what a novel can do in terms of its structure and in terms of its form and stuff like that.

Do you sort of want to bring it back? What is this? You either do or you don’t? You’re pregnant or you’re not. If you write with this hedge-hopping, it will ruin your complete experience. Bring back the structure. Reread The Great Gatsby, with this attitude. I always laugh at how many red marks The Great Gatsby would get by today’s gritting editors. How it would be turned down for publishing.

And so it means starting books, you know, with this sort of Dickensian voice of God speaking from on high, sort of summing up an era.

Take a stand man. Your narrator either knows or doesn’t. No higher power speaks; only voice exists. You’ve earned it. It’s your story. Tell it.

And I think also sort of allowing the narrators in my work to dare to sum up, allowing characters in my work to have ideologies and to argue about those ideologies.

You think? Have you been so brow beaten with all that third-person close doctrine that you pull back your story to satisfy that rule maker? Kick rocks. Here’s the test. If your narrator’s summary teases the reader’s guess for what’s coming, then include it. If it waxes to give something the reader already knows, or suspects, then go back and reread Mamet’s memo to the writers.

I feel like that is a thing that was sort of denuded from the American novel for a lot of millennials [currently between the ages of 28 and 43] and just sort of like trying to put back some of that old-fashioned machinery that was like stripped out of the novel.

Denuded? Is that a writerly word for “stripped?” Do you think? When would you realize you were hit by a car if it ran over you on the street?

And seeing what of it can still function, seeing, trying to figure out if there’s any juice left in these modes of representation. I have…

—”it can still function.” You’re not guessing if it will still function. You know it will, it does. You’re guessing if you got the stones to put it out there. Probably not. Oh? Sure you do? Probably not. Heroes are rare.

Why do you think after years—seventy books, years of study, teaching writing and debating with editors, publishers, students and readers, Joyce Carol Oates says, “There are no rules?”

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