Writing involves thinking all the unthinkable stuff while still taking care of business. Writing then, must feel risky in order to feel like life. I used to cringe when people talked about brave writing. I’d think, calm down, it’s not like youre a fireman or a Special Forces commando. If the mission fails, just toss it in the wastebasket. But I do think, upon reflection, that there is a need to generate emotional risk, a sense of imminence, of danger, in order to transmit that aliveness to the page. This neednt mean personal revelation or offensive language. Sometimes quiet, dense writing is the most deeply and complexly honest. Sometimes intellectual discourse is brave in our Twitter culture. Genuine and sincere emotion can be risky in a world of snark and irony. So can making silly jokes about matters our society regards with sanctimonious seriousness. Sometimes it is just a matter of a writer doing what she does not yet know how to do, speaking about something he does not yet understand. The risk of ambitious failure. —David Gordon
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 16:40:13 +0000
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