I was just reading a rather amazing (and recent) Atlantic Magazine piece on Kurt Vonnegut. I came to the piece through a recommendation from Agent Pete. I will pass on that reco.
A particularly brilliant bit: "To destroy the city of Dresden took hundreds of bombs dropped over multiple hours. To destroy the city of Hiroshima, all it took was one. This, a cynical man might say, is what progress looks like."
Vonnegut, of course, would eventually become quite famous for writing about his time as a Dresden POW.
But this piece looks at Vonnegut, and his struggles to write Cat's Cradle, which is one of my favorite novels.
There is a lot in the piece that we can apply to our own, often daily, struggles with writing.
Consider that Cat's Cradle is 53,000 words long. This sort of length to many on here that comes in the middle of act two, when we're just getting warmed up.
It took him ten years to write, however. It's the old P.G. Wodehouse quip, I've written you a long letter because I didn't have time to write a short one.
That's a good lesson: Don't sweat the word count.
When he wrote this, Vonnegut wasn't making a go of it as a writer. He also was not making a go of it as a writer for another six years after publication of Cat's Cradle. He wasn't making a go until after he wrote about Dresden in Slaughterhouse Five. After that book hit it big, people searched back through his books and discovered it, and many others.
For those hoping to someday make a bit of a living off their writing, that's a good lesson.
It doesn't necessarily have to happen all at once. It is not necessarily a truth that a great book connects with a large readership. Vonnegut was holding down other jobs, teacher, police beat journo, PR writer, even gave running a car dealership a try.
A lesson, one of several, for us from this piece is that he wrote because he had to write. He wrote what he had to write.
He didn't write to be listed among the best U.S. authors of the 20th century, that just came, unexpectedly.
So the lesson, keep writing, keep at it. Write what we believe in, about that for which have passion.
As for the rest, as he taught us, so it goes.
A particularly brilliant bit: "To destroy the city of Dresden took hundreds of bombs dropped over multiple hours. To destroy the city of Hiroshima, all it took was one. This, a cynical man might say, is what progress looks like."
Vonnegut, of course, would eventually become quite famous for writing about his time as a Dresden POW.
But this piece looks at Vonnegut, and his struggles to write Cat's Cradle, which is one of my favorite novels.
There is a lot in the piece that we can apply to our own, often daily, struggles with writing.
Consider that Cat's Cradle is 53,000 words long. This sort of length to many on here that comes in the middle of act two, when we're just getting warmed up.
It took him ten years to write, however. It's the old P.G. Wodehouse quip, I've written you a long letter because I didn't have time to write a short one.
That's a good lesson: Don't sweat the word count.
When he wrote this, Vonnegut wasn't making a go of it as a writer. He also was not making a go of it as a writer for another six years after publication of Cat's Cradle. He wasn't making a go until after he wrote about Dresden in Slaughterhouse Five. After that book hit it big, people searched back through his books and discovered it, and many others.
For those hoping to someday make a bit of a living off their writing, that's a good lesson.
It doesn't necessarily have to happen all at once. It is not necessarily a truth that a great book connects with a large readership. Vonnegut was holding down other jobs, teacher, police beat journo, PR writer, even gave running a car dealership a try.
A lesson, one of several, for us from this piece is that he wrote because he had to write. He wrote what he had to write.
He didn't write to be listed among the best U.S. authors of the 20th century, that just came, unexpectedly.
So the lesson, keep writing, keep at it. Write what we believe in, about that for which have passion.
As for the rest, as he taught us, so it goes.
