Mostly what I try to do lately is emulate the compassion, wisdom and grace that George exhibits in his posts and interviews. And from the comments sections over the past year or so, and very much over the past week, I think I'm not the only one... Writing? Sure, I'm trying to get better, deeper, smarter. But life.... I am getting so much better at life through Story Club. Who woulda thunk it? What a gift and surprise. Thank you George and thank Story Clubbers.
That's great to hear. I am thrilled to say it. And thank YOU George. You are, I dunno, awesome? A treasure? A pedagogical maestro? The dude? We all so appreciate your generosity and care.
There's a fairly common (it seems to me) conception of "growing up" that implies, simply put, getting tougher with oneself and with others. By following Story Club since (almost) its beginning, I feel I've been exposed to another way of growing. As a writer, as a person. I'm seventy-five, so it was about time.
I echo Kurt's thanks to George and Story Clubbers.
Nicely put John. It has been a learning experience for me too. As an aside, I practiced Aikido for many years and learned there too, in the martial arts, that ‘toughness’ is not nearly as valuable or powerful as empathy.
Tai chi for me. One of those things that does you more good than seems likely before you give it a proper go.
As well as having huge benefits in mental, physical and emotional terms, tai chi also brings a calmness that really helps with writing. Sometimes it's tiny details that raise a piece of writing; but it's difficult to see these ripples if there's a storm.
Yes, agreed. We're all better people, I think, just absorbing and contributing to all these thoughtful conversations. This is a remarkable, nurturing space. Thank you to all.
Not to mention, but mentioning anyway, my ongoing attempt to emulate the practices expressed in CONGRATULATIONS BY THE WAY, and instill them in my daughter.
We have a saying here "Kindness rules" that the family tries to live by. Congrats BTW is a touchstone.
And in that regard, this little speech-in-print of George's, (though reflected in much (most?) of his fiction) might be the single most important thing of his I've read. I find myself referring back to the ending note the and actions of the narrator of OFFLOADING FOR MRS SCHWARTZ as the earliest precursor of Congrats BTW in the Saunders canon. And in terms of thematic similarity (though not emulation, I wouldn't say) I think it shows George's affection for Vonnegut's work gloriously.
In 1949, a British magazine ran a contest for stories written in the style of Graham Greene, which the author himself entered under the name of N. Wilkinson. He came second.
Totally LOVE this story. It reminds me years ago in drama class we each acted out a fellow classmate on stage, mannerisms and all. Everyone instantly knew who was being acted out--except the person it was! We didn't see ourselves as others did.
I've run acting classes where we've done something similar, though the subject knows it's them, as we start with observing the subject walking from one end of the room to the other and back, before imitating their gait as accurately as possible. Such a simple exercise, though it requires real trust and support - it could easily slip into pastiche, or even outright mockery otherwise.
Another useful part of the same exercise was for people to suggest where the walker was going, what their job might be, etc.
A further development was to get each walker to try and remove all such clues from their gait. I only ever saw two people achieve this neutrality entirely, with remarkably different result. With one, it was like they'd turned into an automaton without a soul, and one that could do literally anything and it not bother them one jot to do it; it was genuinely unnerving. The other somehow appeared saintlike, seeming unencumbered by the usual human frailties we carry round with us.
"A great imitation places N.Wilkinson second but the winning entry was a marvellous emulation of Mr Greene's exquisite story telling style" said the Chair of the Judge's Panel, "it gives us the greatest pleasure to announce that A. N. Other's story 'South of Southwark' takes first place by a country mile!"
Emulating can also be a lot of fun! I'm in an online writing group that ran an event about a year ago aptly called "Frankenstories." We were asked to do things like write a romance in the style of Dr. Seuss, a western in the style of Poe, horror a la Terry Pratchett, etc. Challenges like these can flex muscles you didn't know you had. And sure, the results are probably not publishable in a reputable journal, but you never know. Treat the silliest assignments seriously, and sometimes you stumble onto the sublime.
I think the value of exercises like these is to start with that first desperate "How?!" and then hammer out something that kinda-sorta makes sense and holds together and entertains people, at least a little. It gives the confidence for those moments when you're stuck on a story that's not working and you can't see what's missing yet. You once wrote Seussian romance. You got this!
Trying to rhyme is usually a painful experience for me. There have been rare instances where I have fallen into a groove with rhyme and meter, but that Seuss attempt was NOT one of them.
I was a journalist at Women's Wear Daily for years. Every new reporter was deeply encouraged to read Hemingway (especially The Old Man and the Sea) in hopes of that this would be the result! I remember early days in college I would actually just rewrite articles both new and old by Didion, Capote, and Suzy Menkes, among others, to inhabit their techniques. Such a valuable exercise to learning the craft from the inside out and refining your voice, too.
I used to do this as a young child! One of my immediate impulses when I first got a computer was to open up my favorite book and type out the prose, word for word. Although, when my father saw me doing it, he gave me a long talking to about plagiarism. That wasn't at all my intent, but I shied away from it after that. Wish I'd been able to more clearly articulate what I was doing at age 9.
That’s kind of a lovely story. Your dad, wanting to teach you how to be a good person. And the nine year-old yearning you, unable to explain you simply loved the words--but were not claiming them. A microcosm of love, language and loss. (I’ve never tried this copying warmup/exercise/mind-tune. But I think I will now!)
"And whose technique are you inhabiting today? I'm asking just so I've got a feel for who I'm going to be talking to through this session" said the therapist.
~
"Thank you so much. I feel that thanks to these sessions with you I'm becoming a person that is the real me. I really do" said the client as she sat upright on the couch, stood and walked towards the door. "Just so you know, I think you can expect Joan will talking to you next time."
I’m still on the road and without my trusty computer, so please excuse any inarticulateness or typos. But this subject is not one I wanted to skip over. I used to teach a writing course on imitation. But my idea of “imitation” was not to emulate another writer’s style, but to steal other aspects of a writer’s oeuvre. To me, giving students something to imitate meant giving them the opportunity to face the blank page with more confidence. So, for instance, there was stealing from Joe Brainard, as many have done, by writing a story using the format “I remember” to begin each sentence. (Brainard wrote an entire book this way.) Or, we would read a short story and steal its structure. Or, we would read a short story and steal the transition words used. Or, we’d read a short story and steal its plot. All of these (and more) are forms of imitation and excellent exercises. Forms are fun to imitate. Perhaps we would read a short story that had been written in the form of a letter to the editor. We’d write our own stories using such a form, but changing the plot entirely, etc. I think you get the point. As far as copying a writer’s “style,” by which I think the questioner means “voice,” well, that is problematic for all of the reasons George has already written. You can’t be anyone else but yourself. Okay, I’ve had it with this tiny keyboard. I’m out.
Thanks Mary, for adding this from the road, on your tiny keyboard. Your comments are big even when typed small! My reaction is that I think humans are wired to imitate. It’s how we learn new things. But mastery, as you describe, is evolving past that and becoming yourself. There’s that phrase (which I’ll probably butcher) Become a piano player by playing by the rules. Become an artist by playing from your heart”
Yes, yes--we are wired to learn by imitation. I think it takes a very long time to finally find your own writer’s voice, the one that comes from the heart. I really think it comes from practice. First you imitate and play by the rules. Eventually, you’ve practiced long enough that those outside voices and rules drop away and your authentic voice emerges. At least I think that’s how it works.
Mary G, I like your idea to 'steal other aspects of a writer’s oeuvre'. I think I could do with some stealing to improve my craft technically and to expand my thinking about writing options I may never have considered. I've never emulated, or imitated, as far as I know. Except SOMETIMES I use italics on a word in a conversation and maybe I'm trying to be like Salinger. Generally, I think my voice is my own- too stubborn to be anyone else's.
Steal away, Joan! In fact, you have already imitated if you have ever written a story with a beginning, middle and end. There are hundreds of ways to imitate while maintaining your own originality and voice. Think of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres which is a rewrite/ take on King Lear.
Fantastic! Keep your expectations low (you're just playing with the exercise) and have some fun with it. Later, if you like what you've come up with, you can get serious.
Thank you for your advice, Mary. Trying to write a story loosely based on Katherine-Anne Porter's story about a woman on her deathbed who regrets something somehow ended up in nothing.I realised how hard it is to describe how someone dies without thinking about my own death (I'm 73). How good that you warned me not to set my expectations too high! I think I'll leave the story for now and get back to my novel. Maybe it will flow more easily now.
Exercises are merely for exercising! They get the juices flowing. Your brain hums. You make connections you didn't know you would make. It's all practice, which is exactly what every writer needs to do.
Did any of your students morph from being an imitator to an emulator Mary? By which I mean, did any ever match to write pieces that achieved the same or, conceivably even 'better' quality than the author whose style they were set to imitate?
Hi, Rob. I had some wonderful students. One, in particular, blew my mind with her talent and her ability to use these exercises to produce original, compelling work. Most of the pieces I presented were written by the best writers, and so all of us reached toward that sort of mastery. I considered any attempts at all a success. The more writing, the better.
Wow! She succeeded in reaching well towards mastery with best pieces written by different writers?
One sense in which we, I think quite readily, relate to emulation in Story Club is that why we definitely get to know his approach to working with each story in focus is that its easy to realise that he's not seeking imitators but encouraging our personal emulation of it, or more accurately bite size chunks of it, as and where appropriate.
You're right: the more writing we do the better prospect of getting to produce original, compelling work of our own.
What I meant was that one of my students produced some wonderful writing while writing into a “borrowed” structure. At base, anyone using the conventional structure of a three act arc or Freytag’s triangle is imitating a structure. We are all imitators!
I recall a TV program in which Daniel Barenboim was giving tips to several gifted young pianists, in which his advice was incredibly well-tuned to the needs of each student. So much of what he said also [it seemed to me] applied to writing.
Talking about the way one particular piece was played, he told the pianist 'You must find the structure in the music. And if there isn't one, you must impose one'.
Maybe {rhetorical musing) there's a line of inquiry emerging for someone, hinged on exploring whether the best writing represents the product of journeying from reader > writer > imitator > emulator > originator?
As George suggested, many writers do the emulation unconsciously, and it seems part of a word-farmer's winnowing. But sometimes it's simple fun to do it deliberately. Here was me a ways back playing Albert Camus starting a blog:
My blog was born today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be bothered. After the first few lines of the post, I felt exceedingly tired, and I put to rest. I answered the postman’s knock, and when he handed me a few fliers, I felt his look contained a judgment. I thought he was accusing me of something, perhaps even something indecent. I blurted out, “Yes, the blog, I’ll finish it. There is time!” But I closed the door on him without needing to see his reaction. Later, I felt poorly for having done it.
Emulating another writer can also be a very handy tool in revision, in that trying out the story in the style of someone else, can sometimes open something up that you couldn't see before. Plus, it's always good to stretch some of those less-used craft muscles.
I've tried writing Hemingway but for me it took my tendency towards somewhat passive characters and muted so much that the result was less iceberg and more ice cube. Then I experimented a little with Rick Moody's long sentences, which helped me gain some variety in my rhythm. I've also tried writing a story modelled after a particular TC Boyle story and what I discovered is that the structure in that story is much, much harder to pull off than it seems.
Start with a page and see how it feels, what you like about it. If there's something interesting happening, keep going. See what it reveals, what works.
Revision is rarely a straight line. There's usually some wandering around while you figure out what the story needs.
It’s an old practice, and writers as varied as Robert L Stevenson, Ben Franklin, and Hunter Thompson have spoken of doing it. It’s a great way to make a start and every(or almost every) artist in every medium does it. Bob Dylan spent his first few years personating Woody Guthrie and Ramblin Jack Elliott. Ray Charles was trying to sound like Nat King Cole. When I was in high school, I used to write out song lyrics of songs that I knew, I think it helped me a lot. But over the long haul, as has been said, it’s not really sustainable.
I remember Jon Stewart making a comment that for the first couple years he was a comic , he was just impersonating a standup comedian. And that was how he finally learned how to be one. That resonated with me.
I think the first writer I emulated was Vonnegut. I got caught up with the way he was able to merge the funny with the sad with the beautiful while keeping his prose extremely accessible. The jokey way his stories unfolded like they were being read aloud on a porch somewhere in Indiana was great, but as much as I enjoyed it and wanted my writing to have a similar quality, I’ve realized with time that my response was to the worldview, not necessarily the method.
That being said, I’ve been reading Jamel Brinkley’s newest book Witness (which is a banger so far), and seeing the way he unveils a plot point in one of his stories broke open one of my own stories. I think there are levels to emulation. There’s the whole cloth, “I want to be X” version, and the revelation of certain rhetorical moves that maybe a writer could have eventually figured out on their own, but are easier to glean from a master. If we’re going with George’s sports metaphor, this might be a team watching tape of another team.
Many years ago, the writer I emulated was Anais Nin and then woke up to recognize that I didn't like her, didn't like her style of storytelling, her whining, her pretending to be poor,, her lack of kindness, etc., and hence I didn't much like myself at that moment. That too was useful!
Bernard Malamud was who I tried to emulate. I thought, absolutely nobody is writing in this wonderful, powerful style these days. Although I did a reasonable facsimile of Malamud’s style, needless to say the result wasn’t stories of great caliber because duh, I’m not Bernard Malamud. I had to find my own voice, which is an ongoing process.
Thanks so much for this — I’m a student and just turned in a story for workshop that was a clear emulation of Cormac McCarthy. I’ve found it a very effective way to learn as a writer: to try on all of the voices I revere, and then discern at which points moments of myself stick out, and then attempt to pay close attention to those moments and what they reveal about my own voice. I talk to many writers who have just started who are very concerned about “finding their voice,” and I think it’s helpful to remember that human beings are inherently imitative — it’s how we learn practically everything, including speech and language when we are young. Where emulation goes wrong is when the writer becomes confined, thinking “this is the only way to do it” or is consumed in doubt that they will never have anything “original” to say. I’m also reminded of Tobias Wolff’s novel Old School, in which the narrator plagiarizes to win an audience with his hero, Hemingway — it disheartens me when this competitive attitude rears its head in the workshop, as if the point is to impress everyone instead of aid in development.
I believe I emulate on the level of the paragraph -I pay close attention to the paragraphing of a writer whose pacing and subject matter and voice I find particularly compelling and then try to sketch over it with my own thing.
I want to kind of absorb, not the quality of the writer’s voice, but how they roll out information on the micro-level that makes me want to keep reading. My books have marginal notes all down the pages that I later make into lists in a
Word doc after I’m done reading - short bursts of summary like:
1. Description of the old barn
2. Thoughts on wife’s suicide
3. Son riding tractor, waving
4. Remembering Great Flood of ‘86
5. Description of wife’s funeral dress
Then, from a story I already have the characters and plot somewhat worked out, I’ll make a paragraph-level list of what the first draft could contain, like:
1. Description of haunted house facade
2. Thoughts on first Halloween
3. Old man with hook hand mowing lawn, waving.
4. Remembering car crash
5. Description of driver’s ninja turtle costume.
Etc etc...
-this seems to get me going on a first draft. I often just open George’s Swim in the Pond book to where I have his “shot lists” of stories listed and just stare at them for inspiration for a minute as well. I like to think of my story just starting as an informal list of things.
I've done similar with plays. Arthur Miller's All My Sons [for example] is great for learning about story structure, how things ebb and flow, how danger rises and falls, how information is revealed, how different characters carry different parts of the story, etc.
Similarly, Dennis Kelly's Orphans is a brilliant model of how information is revealed, and how each subsequent revelation takes us deeper, and changes the significance and meaning of what's gone before.
Sus by Barrie Keefe [who also wrote The Long Good Friday] is a great example of the gestalt - how the pieces form an almost virtual image of the story behind the story. The play revolves around someone suspected of a terrible crime, and we're told about a lot of the evidence that points to his guilt; but by the end, you can work out what actually happened, even though it isn't spelled out.
The best example I can think of this in novel form is The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Even the title points to the fact that there is a story behind what is actually revealed.
An interesting way into writing, akin to planning a walking itinerary by plotting and pencilling in stages after studying possibilities after close reading a 1:25,000 scale map.
Does the description of the old barn, in the first Point 1 above, have to fit with or conform to prior determined parameters? What it doesn't? Or what is it does but just doesn't carry the pulse forward to thoughts on the wife's suicide?
One of many ways into writing a story. Thanks for sharing.
slow, follow its flow, perhaps to find a bifurcation, perhaps shown as 'Frost's Point' on the story map ... just imagine, one channel with a well trodden path, the other not so much, which to take, in walking, on, downstream?
Joan Didion claims she “learned” how to write by literally typing out great swaths of Hemingway’s prose. Hemingway seems particularly susceptible to imitation and influence. His effect on 20th Century prose is perhaps unrivaled. Perhaps because it seems so simple and within reach of anyone.
When I started out my prose god was Nabokov; and you can almost predict the car wreck that ensued. Like DFW, the great Russian is near impossible to imitate. I spent years embarrassing myself all over the landscape with blatantly overwritten prose thinking I was channeling Pale Fire. It took a kind editor to point out that I was showing off or as Foster Wallace would put it, mostly stunt pilotry.
That said, I’d not change that embarrassment for anything. It was an expression of sheer love of language and the written word. And that’s why any of us write.
And will the title of your memoir of your writing life be 'Out of Emulation: My Voice'?
Thanks for mentioning Nabokov, he's one of the great Russians that has never managed to be a reading furrow I've managed to get beyond a passing skirmish width and plough with depth.
The first things I ever wrote of any length at all were the answers to essay test questions in my undergrad history classes, My Western Civ prof only gave these sorts of tests, usually two or three questions per exam, and this sort of set task was and is my forte - I had no problem quickly scrawling out seven or eight page answers per question (back in the 70s when writing meant handwriting.) I was rather proud of this minor ability of mine - until the day that, across the face of my little blue, graded exam book, the prof had scrawled very large, leaning, seemingly angry red letters that said, "LEARN TO WRITE!". Jeez, that hurt, and stayed with me a long time - it felt like a slap in response to honest effort. I'm sure she was just exasperated (she was quite young, new to the job), having to read untold reams of truly wretched undergrad prose. More to the point at hand - beginning in my senior year of high school, I had become an avid reader, mainly inspired by reading Tolkien and C.S. Lewis fictions through and through. Reading these two fine stylists gave me my first inklings of how good writing might be distinguished from bad, pun intended. But this new appreciation of good writing was not connected in my mind as applicable to the sort of writing I found in textbooks and other scholarly works - entirely different modes, I assumed. Until, a few years later, I bought a used copy of C.S. Lewis's contribution to the Oxford History of English Literature, "English Literature in the Sixteenth Century". I was gob-smacked - this book did not read like any other scholarly work in my memory. Lewis was his usual self: direct, pithy, brilliant, clear as a bell, amusing, and even a bit sassy in places. No descents into academic jargon or vagaries or theory-speak. This was a revelation to me of sorts - I realized that, in writing those old college essays, I had actually been emulating (poorly I'm sure) the (non-Lewisian) academic language I was immersed in as a liberal arts major. All to say, I found out how one can be in emulation mode and not aware of it. It took the writing of an academic who was in many ways a misfit in academia to bring me this understanding. A silent moment of thanks to those authors who give us the clarity and satisfactions of truly great styles that, at rare times in our lives, strike like miraculous light.
To quote, echo, EMULATE a very fine band: YOU CAN GO YOUR OWN WAY (GO YOUR OWN WAY) -- or not, or both, as the case may be. We're all magpies, are we not?
A really interesting impulse, and one I share, especially when listening to good live music. I've often wondered whether the inspiration I get at gigs is a result of the music stimulating something in me that comes before words [it certainly has nothing in common with the lyrics], or whether the music might [for example] keep my more analytical side occupied, allowing my more creative side to blossom.
Even Shakespeare was called 'an upstart crow' [surely meaning a thieving magpie!] at the beginning of his career; though perhaps also a reference to clothes he borrowed when having his portrait painted.
I've read that the only play of his that has no recognisable earlier source is The Tempest; still the greatest poet and playwright that's ever lived, though!
Roald Dahl is played by Ralph Fiennes (Fiennes also acts the part of other characters, mainly The Rat Catcher,) in a series of films of some Dahl short stories. Dahl is portrayed in his writing cottage sitting in his writing chair writing on a special type of custom-made writing prop. Several years ago, when designing the perfect writing position for me, I made the exact same prop. (You may have done the same.) It is a large board that sits across the arms of your writing chair, (in my case a Lazy-Boy recliner which stretches out at the perfect angle for relaxed writing,) and has a deep semi-circle cut out of the edge of one side to encompass one's gut. The outer edge of Dahls Board is raised slightly by the insertion of what looks like a cylinder of the type bolts of cloth are wrapped around, giving a rake to the board. I rake my board up by raising my knees and have a couple of ribs screwed on its surface to stop my pens, books, journal, laptop, snack plate, sliding down. I write like an astronaut plying with switches and dials in her capsule. It is now with pure delight that I write on a board identical to Dahls.
The Films are on netflix. Here's a link to "The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar." which begins with Fiennes as Dahl in his writing chair:
I have now completed my own writing board as per your instructions (except for the Lazy-Boy recliner, I'm lazy enough without one). I am now balancing a cardboard cylinder on my knees in order to give a rake, and I have Super-glued (I couldn't face screws) two of my ribs to the board, but things still keep sliding offfffffffffffffffffffffHGBN:::! (dang, that was the keyboard, just got it back).
I am also in some quandary as to how to get out of here for much-needed toilet break. Can you advise, Sir Iam?
🤣 "This guy Iam is for real" declared the Head of Anti-AI Design & Marketing at 'Real Folks 'R Us Inc. "no Bot that will ever be known to Human Kind will ever come up with a word string as richly resonant with redolence of real, lived life as 'has a deep semi-circle cut out of the edge of one side to encompass one's gut'"
🤔"Yes but think of how many great stories will founder because, in the passion that, is writing Maestro Beauchamp has neglected to realise that he has, continuing of the white space spread page if his manuscript written chunks of the story he is penning across the white space of his favoured linen shirts?"
Christies today: 14th September 2051. Two linen shirts belonging to little known and recently deceased writer I am Beauchamp smudged with the partially decipherable alternative ending to his only published work fetched 75-thousand-pound sterling at hammer fall. Having discovered the two garments in a laundry basket, his editor and longtime agent provocateur Sir Rob Edwards, re-published the work with the alternative ending gaining a post humus Booker for Beauchamp, and considerable pestering by the ghosts of many impoverished writers for Edwards.
Don't know if, but have an inkling you just might be, you happen to have more than a passing interest in All Blacks fortunes. South Africa carried the win last evening in Paris but New Zealand could have, indeed by some measures of what attests to the best of rugby union can be 'should have', won this latest, in my view marvellous sports test. C'est la vie ... 2027 in Australia should be a cracker.
Aye. The best play, however, was the lifting and spinning around of an All Black by a Bok, a second Bok snatching the ball from the hapless Black and running away with it. Here be a photo of "Dahls Board" https://iambeauchamp.substack.com/
'An All Black Spun Spun By A Bok' ... Aye ... That's a phrase to be writing down. And, I'm minded to gently suggest, to be taking up as a speculative fiction title off which to spin the candyfloss of a narrative that sticks!
Mostly what I try to do lately is emulate the compassion, wisdom and grace that George exhibits in his posts and interviews. And from the comments sections over the past year or so, and very much over the past week, I think I'm not the only one... Writing? Sure, I'm trying to get better, deeper, smarter. But life.... I am getting so much better at life through Story Club. Who woulda thunk it? What a gift and surprise. Thank you George and thank Story Clubbers.
Thank you, Kurt - you seriously made my day with this.
That's great to hear. I am thrilled to say it. And thank YOU George. You are, I dunno, awesome? A treasure? A pedagogical maestro? The dude? We all so appreciate your generosity and care.
I think we're doing something special here - sort of a nice, counter-cultural feel to it: we're nice! We respect one another! We read! :)
😁🙏
There's a fairly common (it seems to me) conception of "growing up" that implies, simply put, getting tougher with oneself and with others. By following Story Club since (almost) its beginning, I feel I've been exposed to another way of growing. As a writer, as a person. I'm seventy-five, so it was about time.
I echo Kurt's thanks to George and Story Clubbers.
Nicely put John. It has been a learning experience for me too. As an aside, I practiced Aikido for many years and learned there too, in the martial arts, that ‘toughness’ is not nearly as valuable or powerful as empathy.
This is so true. I practise wing chun and feel that empathy helps you to grow internally more. Great piece.
Tai chi for me. One of those things that does you more good than seems likely before you give it a proper go.
As well as having huge benefits in mental, physical and emotional terms, tai chi also brings a calmness that really helps with writing. Sometimes it's tiny details that raise a piece of writing; but it's difficult to see these ripples if there's a storm.
Yes, agreed. We're all better people, I think, just absorbing and contributing to all these thoughtful conversations. This is a remarkable, nurturing space. Thank you to all.
Thanks Elissa. What a group!
So happy you are here, Kurt. Thanks for this post.
Ditto Mary....
Well put Kurt. I feel the same way - Thanks for saying this. Gloria
Thanks Gloria!
Not to mention, but mentioning anyway, my ongoing attempt to emulate the practices expressed in CONGRATULATIONS BY THE WAY, and instill them in my daughter.
We have a saying here "Kindness rules" that the family tries to live by. Congrats BTW is a touchstone.
And in that regard, this little speech-in-print of George's, (though reflected in much (most?) of his fiction) might be the single most important thing of his I've read. I find myself referring back to the ending note the and actions of the narrator of OFFLOADING FOR MRS SCHWARTZ as the earliest precursor of Congrats BTW in the Saunders canon. And in terms of thematic similarity (though not emulation, I wouldn't say) I think it shows George's affection for Vonnegut's work gloriously.
Thanks for the references!
https://artsandsciences.syracuse.edu/news-all/news-2013/2013-george_saunders_convocation/
Spot on, Kurt! Reading these lessons, I feel I come away a better, more thoughtful person, as well as a smarter, inspired writer!
Spot on. Well said, Kurt.
How many ways to say "yeah!"? You get a bunch here, Kurt.
Ditto, Kurt. Well stated!
In 1949, a British magazine ran a contest for stories written in the style of Graham Greene, which the author himself entered under the name of N. Wilkinson. He came second.
Totally LOVE this story. It reminds me years ago in drama class we each acted out a fellow classmate on stage, mannerisms and all. Everyone instantly knew who was being acted out--except the person it was! We didn't see ourselves as others did.
I've run acting classes where we've done something similar, though the subject knows it's them, as we start with observing the subject walking from one end of the room to the other and back, before imitating their gait as accurately as possible. Such a simple exercise, though it requires real trust and support - it could easily slip into pastiche, or even outright mockery otherwise.
Another useful part of the same exercise was for people to suggest where the walker was going, what their job might be, etc.
A further development was to get each walker to try and remove all such clues from their gait. I only ever saw two people achieve this neutrality entirely, with remarkably different result. With one, it was like they'd turned into an automaton without a soul, and one that could do literally anything and it not bother them one jot to do it; it was genuinely unnerving. The other somehow appeared saintlike, seeming unencumbered by the usual human frailties we carry round with us.
We were young. It was Berkeley in the sixties. We didn’t know we had human frailties! Thanks for your comment.
"A great imitation places N.Wilkinson second but the winning entry was a marvellous emulation of Mr Greene's exquisite story telling style" said the Chair of the Judge's Panel, "it gives us the greatest pleasure to announce that A. N. Other's story 'South of Southwark' takes first place by a country mile!"
Emulating can also be a lot of fun! I'm in an online writing group that ran an event about a year ago aptly called "Frankenstories." We were asked to do things like write a romance in the style of Dr. Seuss, a western in the style of Poe, horror a la Terry Pratchett, etc. Challenges like these can flex muscles you didn't know you had. And sure, the results are probably not publishable in a reputable journal, but you never know. Treat the silliest assignments seriously, and sometimes you stumble onto the sublime.
A romance in the style of Dr. Seuss.. How?😂
Exactly. "How?!"
I think the value of exercises like these is to start with that first desperate "How?!" and then hammer out something that kinda-sorta makes sense and holds together and entertains people, at least a little. It gives the confidence for those moments when you're stuck on a story that's not working and you can't see what's missing yet. You once wrote Seussian romance. You got this!
In this particular case, along with the genre and author to emulate, there was a prompt: "Who cleans up after superhero carnage?" Since I save everything, I can actually show you what I did. It's not my best work. In fact, it's pretty embarrassing. Here it is anyway: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bY6rXAl3-9RsdSfg6eGZ4RwcNyeUNF2D69ve3qSP77A/edit?usp=sharing
I agree! Great stuff!
Funny how apparent limitations can actually free us up. I often get more words on the page if I impose some rule, like having to rhyme.
Trying to rhyme is usually a painful experience for me. There have been rare instances where I have fallen into a groove with rhyme and meter, but that Seuss attempt was NOT one of them.
I just read it! Wow! It may take me to a decade to be at your level. And another point, English is not my mother tongue.
Keep writing!
You're too kind, Celeste!
As a mostly mono-lingual person, I'm in awe of anyone working towards fluency in another language.
I was a journalist at Women's Wear Daily for years. Every new reporter was deeply encouraged to read Hemingway (especially The Old Man and the Sea) in hopes of that this would be the result! I remember early days in college I would actually just rewrite articles both new and old by Didion, Capote, and Suzy Menkes, among others, to inhabit their techniques. Such a valuable exercise to learning the craft from the inside out and refining your voice, too.
Yes, I know a couple of people who copy out the writing of their favorite writers, word for word, as a daily jumpstart to their own writing.
I used to do this as a young child! One of my immediate impulses when I first got a computer was to open up my favorite book and type out the prose, word for word. Although, when my father saw me doing it, he gave me a long talking to about plagiarism. That wasn't at all my intent, but I shied away from it after that. Wish I'd been able to more clearly articulate what I was doing at age 9.
That’s kind of a lovely story. Your dad, wanting to teach you how to be a good person. And the nine year-old yearning you, unable to explain you simply loved the words--but were not claiming them. A microcosm of love, language and loss. (I’ve never tried this copying warmup/exercise/mind-tune. But I think I will now!)
Same here. Or at any age, for that matter!
I did that for a while. I may need to start that again!
"And whose technique are you inhabiting today? I'm asking just so I've got a feel for who I'm going to be talking to through this session" said the therapist.
~
"Thank you so much. I feel that thanks to these sessions with you I'm becoming a person that is the real me. I really do" said the client as she sat upright on the couch, stood and walked towards the door. "Just so you know, I think you can expect Joan will talking to you next time."
I’m still on the road and without my trusty computer, so please excuse any inarticulateness or typos. But this subject is not one I wanted to skip over. I used to teach a writing course on imitation. But my idea of “imitation” was not to emulate another writer’s style, but to steal other aspects of a writer’s oeuvre. To me, giving students something to imitate meant giving them the opportunity to face the blank page with more confidence. So, for instance, there was stealing from Joe Brainard, as many have done, by writing a story using the format “I remember” to begin each sentence. (Brainard wrote an entire book this way.) Or, we would read a short story and steal its structure. Or, we would read a short story and steal the transition words used. Or, we’d read a short story and steal its plot. All of these (and more) are forms of imitation and excellent exercises. Forms are fun to imitate. Perhaps we would read a short story that had been written in the form of a letter to the editor. We’d write our own stories using such a form, but changing the plot entirely, etc. I think you get the point. As far as copying a writer’s “style,” by which I think the questioner means “voice,” well, that is problematic for all of the reasons George has already written. You can’t be anyone else but yourself. Okay, I’ve had it with this tiny keyboard. I’m out.
Thanks Mary, for adding this from the road, on your tiny keyboard. Your comments are big even when typed small! My reaction is that I think humans are wired to imitate. It’s how we learn new things. But mastery, as you describe, is evolving past that and becoming yourself. There’s that phrase (which I’ll probably butcher) Become a piano player by playing by the rules. Become an artist by playing from your heart”
Yes, yes--we are wired to learn by imitation. I think it takes a very long time to finally find your own writer’s voice, the one that comes from the heart. I really think it comes from practice. First you imitate and play by the rules. Eventually, you’ve practiced long enough that those outside voices and rules drop away and your authentic voice emerges. At least I think that’s how it works.
Some of the very, very best drummers started out by practicing 'the rudiments' religiously.
Mary G, I like your idea to 'steal other aspects of a writer’s oeuvre'. I think I could do with some stealing to improve my craft technically and to expand my thinking about writing options I may never have considered. I've never emulated, or imitated, as far as I know. Except SOMETIMES I use italics on a word in a conversation and maybe I'm trying to be like Salinger. Generally, I think my voice is my own- too stubborn to be anyone else's.
Steal away, Joan! In fact, you have already imitated if you have ever written a story with a beginning, middle and end. There are hundreds of ways to imitate while maintaining your own originality and voice. Think of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres which is a rewrite/ take on King Lear.
Are oeuvres another type of raw eggs?^^
Metaphorically, oeuvres are cooked eggs.
Well Done^^
shesh! at least the i can capitalize. Happy travels m'dear.
Ha! Thanks, Iam!
Thanks for this wonderful suggestion, Mary. I will try it out tomorrow!
Fantastic! Keep your expectations low (you're just playing with the exercise) and have some fun with it. Later, if you like what you've come up with, you can get serious.
Thank you for your advice, Mary. Trying to write a story loosely based on Katherine-Anne Porter's story about a woman on her deathbed who regrets something somehow ended up in nothing.I realised how hard it is to describe how someone dies without thinking about my own death (I'm 73). How good that you warned me not to set my expectations too high! I think I'll leave the story for now and get back to my novel. Maybe it will flow more easily now.
Exercises are merely for exercising! They get the juices flowing. Your brain hums. You make connections you didn't know you would make. It's all practice, which is exactly what every writer needs to do.
Did any of your students morph from being an imitator to an emulator Mary? By which I mean, did any ever match to write pieces that achieved the same or, conceivably even 'better' quality than the author whose style they were set to imitate?
Hi, Rob. I had some wonderful students. One, in particular, blew my mind with her talent and her ability to use these exercises to produce original, compelling work. Most of the pieces I presented were written by the best writers, and so all of us reached toward that sort of mastery. I considered any attempts at all a success. The more writing, the better.
Wow! She succeeded in reaching well towards mastery with best pieces written by different writers?
One sense in which we, I think quite readily, relate to emulation in Story Club is that why we definitely get to know his approach to working with each story in focus is that its easy to realise that he's not seeking imitators but encouraging our personal emulation of it, or more accurately bite size chunks of it, as and where appropriate.
You're right: the more writing we do the better prospect of getting to produce original, compelling work of our own.
What I meant was that one of my students produced some wonderful writing while writing into a “borrowed” structure. At base, anyone using the conventional structure of a three act arc or Freytag’s triangle is imitating a structure. We are all imitators!
I recall a TV program in which Daniel Barenboim was giving tips to several gifted young pianists, in which his advice was incredibly well-tuned to the needs of each student. So much of what he said also [it seemed to me] applied to writing.
Talking about the way one particular piece was played, he told the pianist 'You must find the structure in the music. And if there isn't one, you must impose one'.
Thanks for the further clarification Mary.
Maybe {rhetorical musing) there's a line of inquiry emerging for someone, hinged on exploring whether the best writing represents the product of journeying from reader > writer > imitator > emulator > originator?
As George suggested, many writers do the emulation unconsciously, and it seems part of a word-farmer's winnowing. But sometimes it's simple fun to do it deliberately. Here was me a ways back playing Albert Camus starting a blog:
My blog was born today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be bothered. After the first few lines of the post, I felt exceedingly tired, and I put to rest. I answered the postman’s knock, and when he handed me a few fliers, I felt his look contained a judgment. I thought he was accusing me of something, perhaps even something indecent. I blurted out, “Yes, the blog, I’ll finish it. There is time!” But I closed the door on him without needing to see his reaction. Later, I felt poorly for having done it.
I forgave Albert and he forgave me.
Brilliant!
Why, thank you! But perhaps Albert deserves the praise.
Yeah, the guy wouldn't take my calls, so I had to guess
Awfully French of him.
Ever so.
A rare type of camel^^
Nah, he smoked Gauloises ;)
You did make me laugh on that one, though it took a blink for the joke mechanism to click in.
Emulating another writer can also be a very handy tool in revision, in that trying out the story in the style of someone else, can sometimes open something up that you couldn't see before. Plus, it's always good to stretch some of those less-used craft muscles.
I've tried writing Hemingway but for me it took my tendency towards somewhat passive characters and muted so much that the result was less iceberg and more ice cube. Then I experimented a little with Rick Moody's long sentences, which helped me gain some variety in my rhythm. I've also tried writing a story modelled after a particular TC Boyle story and what I discovered is that the structure in that story is much, much harder to pull off than it seems.
"less iceberg and more ice cube" - ha ha love it!
Emulating in revision is a new idea! How much do you do that? 1 page? Thinking about all that back and forth is wasting time. Maybe not?
Start with a page and see how it feels, what you like about it. If there's something interesting happening, keep going. See what it reveals, what works.
Revision is rarely a straight line. There's usually some wandering around while you figure out what the story needs.
Writing draft 0 is not a straight line for me. First time writing a novel here. Gonna feel along with it, I guess.
Sounds like you are doing just fine.
Wandering for decades in a wilderness of words?
Perhaps! But most likely you'll decide you're done with the story sooner than that.... the story may or may not be done, but that's another issue. :)
Ah, thank you! Sometimes a week feels like a decade.
It’s an old practice, and writers as varied as Robert L Stevenson, Ben Franklin, and Hunter Thompson have spoken of doing it. It’s a great way to make a start and every(or almost every) artist in every medium does it. Bob Dylan spent his first few years personating Woody Guthrie and Ramblin Jack Elliott. Ray Charles was trying to sound like Nat King Cole. When I was in high school, I used to write out song lyrics of songs that I knew, I think it helped me a lot. But over the long haul, as has been said, it’s not really sustainable.
I remember Jon Stewart making a comment that for the first couple years he was a comic , he was just impersonating a standup comedian. And that was how he finally learned how to be one. That resonated with me.
I think the first writer I emulated was Vonnegut. I got caught up with the way he was able to merge the funny with the sad with the beautiful while keeping his prose extremely accessible. The jokey way his stories unfolded like they were being read aloud on a porch somewhere in Indiana was great, but as much as I enjoyed it and wanted my writing to have a similar quality, I’ve realized with time that my response was to the worldview, not necessarily the method.
That being said, I’ve been reading Jamel Brinkley’s newest book Witness (which is a banger so far), and seeing the way he unveils a plot point in one of his stories broke open one of my own stories. I think there are levels to emulation. There’s the whole cloth, “I want to be X” version, and the revelation of certain rhetorical moves that maybe a writer could have eventually figured out on their own, but are easier to glean from a master. If we’re going with George’s sports metaphor, this might be a team watching tape of another team.
Many years ago, the writer I emulated was Anais Nin and then woke up to recognize that I didn't like her, didn't like her style of storytelling, her whining, her pretending to be poor,, her lack of kindness, etc., and hence I didn't much like myself at that moment. That too was useful!
Wow. But did you get to hang out with Henry Miller a little bit?
Not even a little. This was the 70s. Nin lived in New York and in LA. I never met her, myself, but I read the novels and the diaries.
The Henry Miller of the mind?
Don't think that was his main domicile!
Totally hear you. I, too, can't stop wanting to come off like Vonnegut. Haven't let that one go yet.
Bernard Malamud was who I tried to emulate. I thought, absolutely nobody is writing in this wonderful, powerful style these days. Although I did a reasonable facsimile of Malamud’s style, needless to say the result wasn’t stories of great caliber because duh, I’m not Bernard Malamud. I had to find my own voice, which is an ongoing process.
Thanks so much for this — I’m a student and just turned in a story for workshop that was a clear emulation of Cormac McCarthy. I’ve found it a very effective way to learn as a writer: to try on all of the voices I revere, and then discern at which points moments of myself stick out, and then attempt to pay close attention to those moments and what they reveal about my own voice. I talk to many writers who have just started who are very concerned about “finding their voice,” and I think it’s helpful to remember that human beings are inherently imitative — it’s how we learn practically everything, including speech and language when we are young. Where emulation goes wrong is when the writer becomes confined, thinking “this is the only way to do it” or is consumed in doubt that they will never have anything “original” to say. I’m also reminded of Tobias Wolff’s novel Old School, in which the narrator plagiarizes to win an audience with his hero, Hemingway — it disheartens me when this competitive attitude rears its head in the workshop, as if the point is to impress everyone instead of aid in development.
Old School is such a great book! Must read it again, thank you.
I believe I emulate on the level of the paragraph -I pay close attention to the paragraphing of a writer whose pacing and subject matter and voice I find particularly compelling and then try to sketch over it with my own thing.
I want to kind of absorb, not the quality of the writer’s voice, but how they roll out information on the micro-level that makes me want to keep reading. My books have marginal notes all down the pages that I later make into lists in a
Word doc after I’m done reading - short bursts of summary like:
1. Description of the old barn
2. Thoughts on wife’s suicide
3. Son riding tractor, waving
4. Remembering Great Flood of ‘86
5. Description of wife’s funeral dress
Then, from a story I already have the characters and plot somewhat worked out, I’ll make a paragraph-level list of what the first draft could contain, like:
1. Description of haunted house facade
2. Thoughts on first Halloween
3. Old man with hook hand mowing lawn, waving.
4. Remembering car crash
5. Description of driver’s ninja turtle costume.
Etc etc...
-this seems to get me going on a first draft. I often just open George’s Swim in the Pond book to where I have his “shot lists” of stories listed and just stare at them for inspiration for a minute as well. I like to think of my story just starting as an informal list of things.
That's a great idea. I'm going to try that!
Yes that's a really great idea. Can you elaborate a bit more on how you proceed please? Possibly with examples?
I've done similar with plays. Arthur Miller's All My Sons [for example] is great for learning about story structure, how things ebb and flow, how danger rises and falls, how information is revealed, how different characters carry different parts of the story, etc.
Similarly, Dennis Kelly's Orphans is a brilliant model of how information is revealed, and how each subsequent revelation takes us deeper, and changes the significance and meaning of what's gone before.
Sus by Barrie Keefe [who also wrote The Long Good Friday] is a great example of the gestalt - how the pieces form an almost virtual image of the story behind the story. The play revolves around someone suspected of a terrible crime, and we're told about a lot of the evidence that points to his guilt; but by the end, you can work out what actually happened, even though it isn't spelled out.
The best example I can think of this in novel form is The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Even the title points to the fact that there is a story behind what is actually revealed.
I do this too!
An interesting way into writing, akin to planning a walking itinerary by plotting and pencilling in stages after studying possibilities after close reading a 1:25,000 scale map.
Does the description of the old barn, in the first Point 1 above, have to fit with or conform to prior determined parameters? What it doesn't? Or what is it does but just doesn't carry the pulse forward to thoughts on the wife's suicide?
One of many ways into writing a story. Thanks for sharing.
walk by any river^^
slow, follow its flow, perhaps to find a bifurcation, perhaps shown as 'Frost's Point' on the story map ... just imagine, one channel with a well trodden path, the other not so much, which to take, in walking, on, downstream?
Joan Didion claims she “learned” how to write by literally typing out great swaths of Hemingway’s prose. Hemingway seems particularly susceptible to imitation and influence. His effect on 20th Century prose is perhaps unrivaled. Perhaps because it seems so simple and within reach of anyone.
When I started out my prose god was Nabokov; and you can almost predict the car wreck that ensued. Like DFW, the great Russian is near impossible to imitate. I spent years embarrassing myself all over the landscape with blatantly overwritten prose thinking I was channeling Pale Fire. It took a kind editor to point out that I was showing off or as Foster Wallace would put it, mostly stunt pilotry.
That said, I’d not change that embarrassment for anything. It was an expression of sheer love of language and the written word. And that’s why any of us write.
And will the title of your memoir of your writing life be 'Out of Emulation: My Voice'?
Thanks for mentioning Nabokov, he's one of the great Russians that has never managed to be a reading furrow I've managed to get beyond a passing skirmish width and plough with depth.
The first things I ever wrote of any length at all were the answers to essay test questions in my undergrad history classes, My Western Civ prof only gave these sorts of tests, usually two or three questions per exam, and this sort of set task was and is my forte - I had no problem quickly scrawling out seven or eight page answers per question (back in the 70s when writing meant handwriting.) I was rather proud of this minor ability of mine - until the day that, across the face of my little blue, graded exam book, the prof had scrawled very large, leaning, seemingly angry red letters that said, "LEARN TO WRITE!". Jeez, that hurt, and stayed with me a long time - it felt like a slap in response to honest effort. I'm sure she was just exasperated (she was quite young, new to the job), having to read untold reams of truly wretched undergrad prose. More to the point at hand - beginning in my senior year of high school, I had become an avid reader, mainly inspired by reading Tolkien and C.S. Lewis fictions through and through. Reading these two fine stylists gave me my first inklings of how good writing might be distinguished from bad, pun intended. But this new appreciation of good writing was not connected in my mind as applicable to the sort of writing I found in textbooks and other scholarly works - entirely different modes, I assumed. Until, a few years later, I bought a used copy of C.S. Lewis's contribution to the Oxford History of English Literature, "English Literature in the Sixteenth Century". I was gob-smacked - this book did not read like any other scholarly work in my memory. Lewis was his usual self: direct, pithy, brilliant, clear as a bell, amusing, and even a bit sassy in places. No descents into academic jargon or vagaries or theory-speak. This was a revelation to me of sorts - I realized that, in writing those old college essays, I had actually been emulating (poorly I'm sure) the (non-Lewisian) academic language I was immersed in as a liberal arts major. All to say, I found out how one can be in emulation mode and not aware of it. It took the writing of an academic who was in many ways a misfit in academia to bring me this understanding. A silent moment of thanks to those authors who give us the clarity and satisfactions of truly great styles that, at rare times in our lives, strike like miraculous light.
To quote, echo, EMULATE a very fine band: YOU CAN GO YOUR OWN WAY (GO YOUR OWN WAY) -- or not, or both, as the case may be. We're all magpies, are we not?
FM had / has such a remarkable energy. Would like to write like they play.
A really interesting impulse, and one I share, especially when listening to good live music. I've often wondered whether the inspiration I get at gigs is a result of the music stimulating something in me that comes before words [it certainly has nothing in common with the lyrics], or whether the music might [for example] keep my more analytical side occupied, allowing my more creative side to blossom.
Even Shakespeare was called 'an upstart crow' [surely meaning a thieving magpie!] at the beginning of his career; though perhaps also a reference to clothes he borrowed when having his portrait painted.
I've read that the only play of his that has no recognisable earlier source is The Tempest; still the greatest poet and playwright that's ever lived, though!
Unconscious emulation of a writing prop:
Roald Dahl is played by Ralph Fiennes (Fiennes also acts the part of other characters, mainly The Rat Catcher,) in a series of films of some Dahl short stories. Dahl is portrayed in his writing cottage sitting in his writing chair writing on a special type of custom-made writing prop. Several years ago, when designing the perfect writing position for me, I made the exact same prop. (You may have done the same.) It is a large board that sits across the arms of your writing chair, (in my case a Lazy-Boy recliner which stretches out at the perfect angle for relaxed writing,) and has a deep semi-circle cut out of the edge of one side to encompass one's gut. The outer edge of Dahls Board is raised slightly by the insertion of what looks like a cylinder of the type bolts of cloth are wrapped around, giving a rake to the board. I rake my board up by raising my knees and have a couple of ribs screwed on its surface to stop my pens, books, journal, laptop, snack plate, sliding down. I write like an astronaut plying with switches and dials in her capsule. It is now with pure delight that I write on a board identical to Dahls.
The Films are on netflix. Here's a link to "The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar." which begins with Fiennes as Dahl in his writing chair:
https://www.netflix.com/watch/81388090?trackId=255824129&tctx=0%2C4%2C40399f41-5703-4339-b1dc-351adb1abce5-95825
I have now completed my own writing board as per your instructions (except for the Lazy-Boy recliner, I'm lazy enough without one). I am now balancing a cardboard cylinder on my knees in order to give a rake, and I have Super-glued (I couldn't face screws) two of my ribs to the board, but things still keep sliding offfffffffffffffffffffffHGBN:::! (dang, that was the keyboard, just got it back).
I am also in some quandary as to how to get out of here for much-needed toilet break. Can you advise, Sir Iam?
(Quickly, please).
not quickly enough! attach bigger ribs as in a photograph of "Dahls Board" here: https://iambeauchamp.substack.com/
I've actually seen the real thing - it's one of the exhibits in a small but perfectly formed Roald Dahl museum in Great Missenden.
🤣 "This guy Iam is for real" declared the Head of Anti-AI Design & Marketing at 'Real Folks 'R Us Inc. "no Bot that will ever be known to Human Kind will ever come up with a word string as richly resonant with redolence of real, lived life as 'has a deep semi-circle cut out of the edge of one side to encompass one's gut'"
🤔"Yes but think of how many great stories will founder because, in the passion that, is writing Maestro Beauchamp has neglected to realise that he has, continuing of the white space spread page if his manuscript written chunks of the story he is penning across the white space of his favoured linen shirts?"
Christies today: 14th September 2051. Two linen shirts belonging to little known and recently deceased writer I am Beauchamp smudged with the partially decipherable alternative ending to his only published work fetched 75-thousand-pound sterling at hammer fall. Having discovered the two garments in a laundry basket, his editor and longtime agent provocateur Sir Rob Edwards, re-published the work with the alternative ending gaining a post humus Booker for Beauchamp, and considerable pestering by the ghosts of many impoverished writers for Edwards.
Is it because you are post humus that the board requires the removal of such a large semicircle?
Delightful to banter blissfully with you Iam.
Don't know if, but have an inkling you just might be, you happen to have more than a passing interest in All Blacks fortunes. South Africa carried the win last evening in Paris but New Zealand could have, indeed by some measures of what attests to the best of rugby union can be 'should have', won this latest, in my view marvellous sports test. C'est la vie ... 2027 in Australia should be a cracker.
Aye. The best play, however, was the lifting and spinning around of an All Black by a Bok, a second Bok snatching the ball from the hapless Black and running away with it. Here be a photo of "Dahls Board" https://iambeauchamp.substack.com/
'An All Black Spun Spun By A Bok' ... Aye ... That's a phrase to be writing down. And, I'm minded to gently suggest, to be taking up as a speculative fiction title off which to spin the candyfloss of a narrative that sticks!