How to Write Read Free

facts of the case are that all these people, including myself, are people with a considerably large endowment, and most of us spent thirty years of our life in being made fun of and laughed at and criticized and having no existence and being without a cent of income. The work needs concentration, and one is often exhausted by it. No one would do this merely for exhibitionism; there is too much bitterness. (TI, PRIMER 32)
    I was talking to a friend the other day and telling her how difficult is was sometimes to get down to work. She was so surprised. She thought it was easy and assumed that as all artists love their work all they had to do was just do it. I explained to her that it wasn’t like that at all. It takes so much effort sometimes just to begin and although going on is mostly a pleasure it is also a great effort. And no one cares whether or not you do it. No one asks you to do it and mostly no one wants it when you have done it and although as a creative artist you accept that it mostly has to be like that, nevertheless it is hard. She was surprised.
    . . . Picasso used to be fond of saying that when everybody knew about you and admired your work there were just about the same two or three who were really interested as when nobody knew about you, but does it make any difference. In writing The Making of Americans I said I wrote for myself and strangers and then later now I know these strangers, are they still strangers, well anyway that too does not really bother me, the only thing that really bothers me is that the earth now is all covered over with people and that knowing anybody is not of any particular importance because anybody can know anybody. (EA 101)
    All this just about covers everything. The only thing left for a creative artist to do in his life is to do his chosen work in spite of everything and regardless of anything because when living draws to an end there are no excuses he can make to himself or to anyone else for not having done it. Either he did it or he did not do it and very often he did not. Alas very often he did not.
    HOW TO WRITE
    I once said in How To Write a book I wrote about Sentences and Paragraphs, that paragraphs were emotional and sentences were not. Paragraphs are emotional not because they express an emotion but because they register or limit an emotion. Compare paragraphs with sentences any paragraph or any sentence and you will see what I mean. (WIEL, LIA 48)
    In a book I wrote called How To Write I made a discovery which I considered fundamental, that sentences are not emotional and that paragraphs are. I found out about language that paragraphs are emotional and sentences are not and I found out something else about it. I found out that this difference was not a contradiction but a combination and that this combination causes one to think endlessly about sentences and paragraphs because the emotional paragraphs are made up of unemotional sentences. (Plays, LIA 93)
     
    In a book called How To Write I worked a lot at this thing trying to find out just exactly what the balance the unemotional balance of a sentence is and what the emotional balance of a paragraph is and if it were possible to make even in a short sentence the two things come to be one. I think I did a few times succeed. (PAG, LIA 225)
    Such a simple discovery that is simple once it is stated and it is exactly so. When you come to make a paragraph you do it because you feel like it. Rationalize it how you will but you make a paragraph when you feel like it.
    A Sentence is not emotional a paragraph is. (HTW 23)
    What is the difference between a question and answer. (33)
    The great question is can you think a sentence. (35)
    Successions of words are so agreeable. It is about this. (39)
    A grammar has been called a list of what is to be done with it. (56)
    Is there grammar in a title. There is grammar in a title. Thank you. (64)
    Grammar has nothing to do with form. (99)
    This is interesting. If you are a structural