IN THE FIELDS OF AIR - On Writing

. . . . In The Fields of Air By Bullion Grey

All Rights Reserved, Derek Lantzsch (C) 2003 Printed in México City Any part of this booklet maybe
reproduced in any form without written permission from the author. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it."
-Edith Wharton

9/15/2003
I write because I feel there is something more to say, than what has been said. I
am not a writer.
I am part of a conspiracy for creative expressions of all kind. I think of it this
way. A person digs a ditch because of the need of a ditch. If he digs many
ditches he is still a person who digs ditches. But I will never concede that this
person is a ditch digger. He does many other things. I don't believe people who
say they are a writer. I don't admire single minded people. Its better not to trap
yourself into a title. Why not be an adventurer?

This little booklet will give you some of the ideas great and little on writing. I was
told in the eighteenth century a form of self education was to collect the wise and
witty sayings in a "common place book". The individual would then refer often.

Maybe this is a kind of "common place book"? It helps to sit around and chat
with creative minds and if you can't in person, well then, why not read what they
have to say about a subject near and dear to you?
This is in booklet form to make it easy for the reader to carry it with him/her. To
refer to it while walking the dog or standing in line at the market. And possibly, in
the process, inspire.

Looking up I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a nighthawk. . . . It was the most
ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger
hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its
strange chuckle, it repeated it's free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then
recovering from it's lofty tumbling, as if it had never set it's foot on terre firma. It appeared to
have no companion in the universe --- sporting there alone --- and to need none but the morning
and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it.
Henry David Thoreau

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can't help it.
 Loe Rosten

I feel a need to have a certain experience, to see certain feelings displayed, to

see certain ideas pursued, and at one point or another I make the audacious
choice of appointing myself as the person who can conceivably do that.
Scott Spencer

If you have the vision and the urge. . . . Then you will discover in yourself the
virtues and the capabilities require for their accomplishments.
Henry Miller

The way you activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the
results you want to create. When you make a choice, you mobilize vast human
energies and resources which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to
focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you
limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you diconnect
yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
Robert Fritz

When a thing doesn't come immediately, the artist's instinct is to say, "Ah, it will
never come. I've lost the magic." It's very difficult to give yourself the
reinforcement, but you must do it. For example. Hemingway used to say that he
wrote all day and he quit while the juice was up. He mean't that if he quit while
he was having a really good writing streak then he could go back the next
morning in the middle of this really good writing and take off again. I can never
do that. If I hit a really good writing streak, I think it's never going to come again;
so I write till four or six in the morning till I'm too exhausted to write any more.
But to be able to take it one step further and to feel what Hemingway felt---well,
that's the next thing I'm working toward.
Barbara Goldsmith

Make friends with your shower. If inspired to sing, maybe the song has an idea in
it for you.
Albert Einstein

The best time for planning a book is while you are doing the dishes.
Agatha Christie

If you are having difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at
an hour when it isn't expecting it.
H.G.Wells

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is
just an embroidered potholder.
Raymond Chandler

fastest writer-- Charles Harold St. John Hamilton (1876-1961).

Wrote the adventures of "Billy Bunter" under the pseudonym Frank Richards.
From 1915 to 1926 Mr. Hamilton often wrote 80,000 words a week. Over his
lifetime, Hamilton wrote over 75 million words.

One of the best ways to find out what you know is to brainstorm. When you
brainstorm you put down everything that comes into your head as fast as you
can. You don't want to be critical; you do want to be illogical, irrational, even silly.
You just want to discover what is in your head. You want to be surprised.
After you have brainstormed, then you should look at what you've written
down to see what surprises you or what connects. These surprises and
connections remind you of what you know and will make you aware of meanings
you hadn't seen before.
Donnald Murray

I always work quickly. If I write slower it doesn't get any better, so I just let it out.
At the time I'm writing I don't waste a damn minute thinking. "Ah this is no good"
or "Is this good enough?" I just do it. Judging yourself is hanging yourself up,
inhibiting yourself. It's dumb. To hell with that---just write it. Later you can look at
it and throw it away, or fix it.
Steve Allen

Now I keep a typewriter with a sheet of paper in it on the end of the kitchen
table. When I have a five-minute lull and the children are playing quietly, I sit
down and knock out a paragraph. I have learned that I can write, if necessary,
with a TV set blaring on one side of me and a child banging a toy piano on the
other. I've even typed out a story with a colicky baby draped across my lap. It is
not ideal---but it is possible.
Lois Duncan

. . . . I find it helps to think of writing as both a journey and a process in which

you are exploring and then restructuring your knowledge into a new
representation that someone else can understand.
Linda Flower

I write to find out what I'm thinking.

Edward
Albee

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

E.M.Forster

For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't

know I knew.
Robert Frost

Fastest female writer-- Kathleen Lindsay (1903-1973)

A South African woman who penned 904 novels. Her writings are under three
married names and eight pen names.

The following is excerpted from Frank Smith's Essays into Literacy

(Exeter, New Hampshire: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983, repr. 1984).
I found this in a college newsletter about 12 years ago. I kept it because it made such an impact
on my ideas of writing.

Writing involves transferring thoughts from the mind to paper

Reality: Writing can create ideas and experiences on paper which could never
exist in the mind (and possibly not in the "real world" either). Thoughts are
created in the act of writing, which changes the writer just as it changes the
paper on which the text is produced. Many authors have said their books know
more than they do, that they cannot recount in detail what their books contain
before, while or after they write them. Writing is not a matter of taking dictation
form yourself; it is more like a conversation with a highly responsive and
reflective other person.

Writing is permanent, speech ephemeral

Reality: Speech, once uttered, can rarely be revised, no matter how much we
might struggle to unsay something we wish we had not said. But writing can be
reflected upon, altered, and even erased at will. This is the first great and unique
potential of writing, that it gives the writer power to manipulate time. Events that
occurred in the past or that may occur in the future can be evaluated, organized,
and changed. What will be read quickly can be written slowly. What may be read
several times need be written only once. What will be read first can be written
last. What is written first need not remain first; the order of anything that is
written can be changed. Such control over time is completely beyond the scope
of spoken language or thought that "remains in the head."

Writing is learned solely from writing

Reality: No one writes enough, especially at school, to have enough mistakes
corrected to learn to write by trial and error. Not even the transcription aspects of
writing could be learned this way, let alone all the subtleties of style and
expression. The only source of knowledge sufficiently rich and reliable for
learning about written language is the writing already done by others. In others
words, one learns to write by reading. The act of writing is critical as a basis for
learning to write from reading; our desire to write provides an incentive and
direction for learning about writing from reading. But the writing that anyone
does must be vastly complemented by reading if it is to achieve anything like the
creative and communicative power that written languages offers.

You must have something to say in order to write

Reality: You often need to write in order to have anything to say. Thought comes
with writing, and writing may never come if it is postponed until we are satisfied
that we have something to say.

Writing is a silent activity

Reality: Writing frequently involves making noise, not only to exchange ideas
(or feelings) with other people, but to give vent to expressions of exhilaration or
fustration.

Writing is a solitary activity

Reality: Writing in general often requires other people to stimulate discussion,
to provide spellings, to listen to choice phrases, and even just for companionship
in an activity that can be so personal and predictable that it creates considerable
stress. Especially when writing is being learned, there is often a great need for
and advantage in people working together.

All art begins and ends with discipline. . . any art is first and foremost a craft.
Archibald MacLeish

Has a drinking song ever been written by a drunken man? It is wrong to think
that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
Gustave Flaubert

What makes me happy is rewriting. In the first draft you get your ideas and your
theme clear, if you are using some kind of metaphor you get that established,
and certainly you have to know where you're coming out. But the next time
though it's like cleaning house, getting rid of all the junk, getting things in the
right order, tidying things up. I like the process of making writing neat.
Ellen Goodman

Focused questions can reveal the key ideas you need now;
What specific results do I want my writing to produce?
What elements in my writing are missing?
What questions haven't I asked myself that would help me solve my greatest
writing problems?
D.B.Grey

Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase
that is grammatical.
W. Somerset Maugham

Good writing is like a windowpane.

George Orwell
Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences
smoothly.
Anatole France
Because I am interested in structure , I must sound mechanistic. But it's just the
opposite. I want to get the structural problems out of the way first, so I can get to
what matters more. After they're solved, the only thing left for me to do is tell the
story as well as possible.
John McPhee

There is no one right way. Each of us finds a way that works for him. But there is
a wrong way. The wrong way is to finish your writing day with no more words on
paper than when you began. Writers write.
Robert B. Parker

I would want to tell my students of a point strongly pressed, if my memory

serves, by Shaw. He once said that as he grew older, he became less and less
interested in theory, more and more interested in information. The temptation in
writing is just reversed. Nothing is so hard to come by as a new and interesting
fact. Nothing is so easy on the feet as a generalization.
John Kenneth Galbraith

It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Those who
do not do this remain amateurs.
Gerald Brenan

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.
Ernest Hemingway

An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as

talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world
hands out and the punishment he inflicts on himself.
Irwin Shaw

Rejected most -- John Creasey (1908-1973)John Creasey collected what is

believed to be a record number of rejection slips, 743, before the publication of
his first of 564 books. In his forty years of writing he wrote more than 40 million
words.

I think it is bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the
root of the creative art. It discharges the tension.
Norman Mailer

Never talk about what you are going to do until after you have written it.
Mario Puzo

I don't use the word "work," you know that? It's almost a superstition with me. I
never say, "I go to work." I say. "I go to the studio" or "I have to go draw
pictures," but never say work, because I always have the feeling that if I call it
work then God is going to take it away from me. That's my spiritual superstition.
Charles Shultz

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages a sick sense of
failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. Then I gradually write one page
and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.
John Steinbeck

Don't have time?

Look at the thickness of the book Gone With The Wind. Margaret Mitchell wrote
Gone With The Wind while she was working full time at a newspaper.

Most writing is dull, and this is inexcusable, because it's one of the
simplest problems to solve. Some of the tricks to make writing lively are:
Be specific Reveal your feelings about the subject
Use active verbs Use proper nouns
Put people on the page Use direct quotes
Let the reader see Vary sentence length
Vary paragraph length Give examples
Use analogies Document with anecdotes
Change the pace Let the reader hear a voice

Donald Murray

Needed the cash --- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

It is said of Mr. Johnson that he wrote Rasselas in a week to pay for his mothers
debts and her funeral.

If I didn't know the end of a story, I wouldn't begin it.

Katherine Anne Porter

I don't know how far away the end is---only what it is. I know the last sentence,
but I'm very much in the dark concerning how to get to it.
John Irving

I don't know how to say this without it sounding crazy---but the characters in my
books take over and do the writing for me. And as the book progresses, these
characters will do things that I had no intention for them to do. And it becomes so
strong there's nothing I can do about it. This character takes over, a character
that I started out thinking was not very important. Suddenly that character will
come to the foreground and say, "Hey, here I am and here's what I'm going to
do."
Ib Melchior

I must keep to my own style, and go on in my own way; and though I may never
suceed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.
Jane Austen

Good Juggler -- Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)

Creator Of Perry Mason, once worked on seven novels simultaneously. His
lifetime contribution topped at 140 books.

Writing is just you, alone in a room with your inspiration and imagination, doing
something only you can do exactly that way. Only Dostoyevsky, with his unique
combination of talent and life experience, could have written Crime &
punishment. Only Edgar Rice Burroughs could have created Tarzan. No one but
Mark Twain could have made us laugh at that jumping frog contest. And only you
can create the works of reporting and make-believe, of comedy and tragedy, that
will be your gift to the readers of the world.
David Fryxell

There are other writers who would persuade you not to go on, that everything is
nonsense, that you should kill yourself. They, of course, go on to write another
book while you have killed yourself.
John Gardner

One way to get it done -- George Simenon (1903-1989)

The French mystery writer would get a complete medical exam before locking
himself in a room to write. Six days later he would have a completed novel. Over
his lifetime he penned 500 books.

Some of the things we learned about writing from these authors

are:
1. If you have the vision you will find the ability.
2. The way you become creative is by knowing what it is you want to create.
3. You can plan your writing while doing other things.
4. One way to overcome writers block is to surprise yourself.
5. You need both technique and passion.
6. Use brainstorming to stimulate your writing.
7. Writing quickly can help you write better.
8. After you write then you can revise or scrap the material.
9. Writing is exploring and then restructuring your knowledge.
10. Writing is thinking. Write to think.
11. Don't talk about your writing, just write.
12. Use your own style.

Enjoy,
Bullion Grey
Creative Braintrust

Back Cover

WRITING CAUGHT YOUR INTEREST?

Sit down with a cup of hot coffee and join in the conversation with some of the
great and not so great writers of our time. Here you'll find ideas, inspiration and
instructions from those who know. Make friends with the people inside and find
out what you need to do next.
Robert Frost John Kenneth Galbraith Archibald MacLeish
Gustave Flaubert John McPhee John
IrvingKatherine Anne Porter E.M.Forster
George Orwell John Steinbeck Norman
Mailer
Anatole France W. Somerset Maugham Steve Allen
Ernest Hemingway Charles Shultz Albert
Einstein and many more speak with you in - IN THE FIELDS OF AIR