Ex scripto

Most of the writing journalists would like for me to go dig a hole and jump in it. Because, if they are clever enough, they get peeved and annoyed while reading me. And if they don't, then they must be either very stupid, or very deceitful.

There was a theory that I write out of jealousy. This is ridiculous. Should I feel jealous, then it would much rather be of people like Tolstoy, or Faulkner, than a bunch of second-rate jerks who couldn't write his or her way out of the trash-can.
People disseminate such weird stuff these days.

A lot of the new folk on the scene seem to think that going over with some sort of personal delivery would do the trick. Well, maybe it would, but what's literature got to do with it?

Either you are a writer, or you are none. There is no compromise. In case one, you have a message that reads, in case two, all you're really doing is selling your soul by the line, being a poet, or by the thousand, if you are into prose.

There are lots of writers that I wouldn't care to read, were I a reader, and I reckon there ought to be lots of readers who would never read me. Because, frankly, they don't understand what I'm doing. And feeling kind of dumb is a very limited and frustrating experience one gets out of a book, or a story, should one consider himself to be a writer of sorts.

You don't go and write to get attention. Wearing tight jeans, and no bra, could prove a much better way of stopping the traffic. One writes in order to express himself through, and by, the medium that is at the same time the means and the goal, form and meaning, question and answer. By writing, you translate what you don't understand into something very special that the reader might be able to understand. Or, he might not. In that case, writing is going to get lonely.

No one can touch you, touch what you've got. What's that you've got? Write it out. She's not hip yet – but, shaping up.