David – I’m going to take the opportunity to emerge from my lurker status on Story Club to bolster your post through praising your essay “Lever of Transcendence” from your book “On Writing Fiction” (I sent you a personal email 8-9 years ago thanking you for it). For me, George’s wonderful corpus of Office Hours posts and his insights fro…
David – I’m going to take the opportunity to emerge from my lurker status on Story Club to bolster your post through praising your essay “Lever of Transcendence” from your book “On Writing Fiction” (I sent you a personal email 8-9 years ago thanking you for it). For me, George’s wonderful corpus of Office Hours posts and his insights from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain essentially model practice within your theory—namely that divergence and contradiction are the means, or “lever,” that gets us to that place we need to go. When George talks about those problem areas as gateways to improvement (“transcendence”), we really hit the sweet spot of your essay. All that Keats “negative capability” stuff is what so many of the “greats” always come around to—O’Connor, Chekhov, Conrad, Saunders, etc. The good ones are always after that “lever.” Anyone who appreciates George’s posts, I’m convinced, would be well served by reading your essay.
I also feel the need to mention your superb essay “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Abstraction.” It’s a part of the larger whole you outline in “Lever,” and it’s the first article I recommend to anyone interested in nuts-and-bolts writing (along with George’s Guardian article “What Writer’s Really Do When They Write”).
Many thanks for the shout-out, Kirk. I'm very pleased you found "Lever of Transcendence" valuable. ON WRITING FICTION is out of print now but in 2022 Press 53 published a revised and expanded edition of it under the title ALONE WITH ALL THAT COULD HAPPEN: ON WRITING FICTION, so anyone who's interested can find the essay there. Press 53 has also recently published my new collection of essays, WORDS MADE FLESH: THE CRAFT OF FICTION, and it contains the "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Abstraction" essay you mention.
David – I’m going to take the opportunity to emerge from my lurker status on Story Club to bolster your post through praising your essay “Lever of Transcendence” from your book “On Writing Fiction” (I sent you a personal email 8-9 years ago thanking you for it). For me, George’s wonderful corpus of Office Hours posts and his insights from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain essentially model practice within your theory—namely that divergence and contradiction are the means, or “lever,” that gets us to that place we need to go. When George talks about those problem areas as gateways to improvement (“transcendence”), we really hit the sweet spot of your essay. All that Keats “negative capability” stuff is what so many of the “greats” always come around to—O’Connor, Chekhov, Conrad, Saunders, etc. The good ones are always after that “lever.” Anyone who appreciates George’s posts, I’m convinced, would be well served by reading your essay.
I also feel the need to mention your superb essay “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Abstraction.” It’s a part of the larger whole you outline in “Lever,” and it’s the first article I recommend to anyone interested in nuts-and-bolts writing (along with George’s Guardian article “What Writer’s Really Do When They Write”).
Many thanks for the shout-out, Kirk. I'm very pleased you found "Lever of Transcendence" valuable. ON WRITING FICTION is out of print now but in 2022 Press 53 published a revised and expanded edition of it under the title ALONE WITH ALL THAT COULD HAPPEN: ON WRITING FICTION, so anyone who's interested can find the essay there. Press 53 has also recently published my new collection of essays, WORDS MADE FLESH: THE CRAFT OF FICTION, and it contains the "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Abstraction" essay you mention.
Yep, I agree!