 Friday, October 21, 2005
There ain't a blogger who hain't imagined hisself a writer. But when I read Karen Hall say she has to constantly remind herself why she became a writer, well, that helps cure the itch. And the blog is a wonderful outlet, though too much of my writing has the Editor-in-Chief too much in charge. The blog is too public to go wild but too private not to want to sneak in something daring. Writing for real works in only a couple distinct ways. One way is if you get off on obscure bits of meaningless history. If you have sufficient curiosity to care what King Edward VII ate for breakfast, then you might be the writer of history. Most history books I see out now weigh twenty pounds and major in minutiae. The second way to write is to experience life widely, and to write about it in the form of a novel or travelogue. A novel must have a strong sense of place and this is acquired either naturally (i.e. Walker Percy, born in the gothic south) or unnaturally (Tom Wolfe, who researches his novels with a historian’s carefulness). Being born in Ohio lends itself primarily to comedic writing. • • • • •
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