Thursday, January 07, 2010

Lethem on Writing

2 comments:

The Latent Fox said...

This is a great clip, thanks for posting. I like Lethem's advice on the revision process, I too think a lot is lost, or sacrificed, by computer editing. Haven't read too much of his stuff, though, only, incidentally, the excerpt from Chronic City that was featured in the NYer a couple of months ago.

Also, this is ODT (from yesterday) and I've decided to resuscitate my floundering blog and sometimes post the earliest ideas for stories and poems that I've been working on. Any comments or casual thoughts from someone who seems quite committed to this craft would be much appreciated!

Unknown said...

Yes, Lethem's advice on re-typing a manuscript is wonderful. I had a workshop teacher once, Chuck Wachtel, who said the same thing. I was already doing that for short stories, at least once in the process of writing, but I've since done that with a novel manuscript and the "alchemy" that Lethem refers to is real.

The only novel of Lethem's I've read is Motherless Brooklyn, which was wonderful. I liked that TNY excerpt, so I'll probably read Chronic City at some point.

Good luck with the blog. I'll pop by.