Writing truths

Monday 3/25/24

If you have to try and convince yourself that something is right, it's not. Get it right.

The end is the most important part because everything else has been the most important part up until then.

The end should have a multi-fold effect. One such effect is that the reader should feel as if they've been stapled into this invisible portion of their chair that is evidence of a world beyond this one in which they are sitting. The reader should wish and need to be alone just then. To have that be a moment of life and existence that is just for them. If there are people in the next room, that is not the time to stand up and walk into it.

If you write with a single person in mind--and they need not be real--and you write entirely for them, to them, as if all of your efforts are made to reach them, and you do this as well as it can possibly be done, you may produce something that is for everyone.

The more things you can move closer to the top, the better. When this is mastered, everything is an absolute of vitality and it all still builds.

How much you care about your characters will determine much. How much you honestly care. And in showing them that you do. I say honestly, because I don't mean so that you can call yourself a writer when you are not a writer so that you can be a member of a subculture and try to stave off your desperate, gnawing insecurity and emptiness with lies and "community." It can be very simple, in one way. All you have to do is care about those characters and act upon your caring so that your actions are commensurate with your feelings. Show them how much you care when they have earned the fullness of your heart. That's really what writing is.