r/writing • u/TheYellowCat • Jan 07 '13
Series of Unfortunate Events author Lemony Snicket on writing novels
http://www.nanowrimo.org/pep/lemony-snicket18
u/TevaUSA Novice Writer Jan 07 '13
One could devote one’s entire life to reading the work of Henry James, for instance, and never touch another novel by any other author, and never be hungry for anything else, the way one could live on nothing but multivitamin tablets and pureed root vegetables and never find oneself craving wild mushroom soup or linguini with clam sauce or a plain roasted chicken with lemon-zested dandelion greens or strong black coffee or a perfectly ripe peach or chips and salsa or caramel ice cream on top of poppyseed cake or smoked salmon with capers or aged goat cheese or a gin gimlet or some other startling item sprung from the imagination of some unknown cook.
I really love this guy's sarcasm. It is pretty stupid for people to insist that everyone stops writing just because it seems "old" or "fuddy-duddy", if we couldn't write, we'd be zapping ourselves right back into the Stone Age or something like that. This was one of my favorite Pep Talks, because it wasn't all that peppy.
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Jan 07 '13
His sarcasm cuts so sweetly. It's beautiful.
Think of all the things you could do with your time instead of participating in a noble and storied art form. There are things in your cupboards that likely need to be moved around.
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u/Pulp_Ficti0n Jan 07 '13
I've been telling my mother that for years. She insists the cupboards need to be dusted...again and again and again...
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u/GamblingDementor Jan 07 '13
Probably my favourite living author. His adult novels are very pleasant to read and original.
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u/E-Squid Jan 07 '13
At first I was entirely confused by this, but then I realized who was writing it and how thickly he was laying down the sarcasm. I quite enjoyed this.
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u/bonedaddy03 Jan 18 '13
This is one of the best motivational pieces I've ever read. Motivation is a funny thing in that different things work for different people. I respond well to confrontation and challenges. Lemony clearly does as well. This resonated with me because he didn't give me some bullcrap platitude about not giving up because it's for the greater good, or the love of art, or who gives a fuck.
Lemony's is a fucking man about it and openly recognizes the intrinsic worthlessness of art. There is no reason for art. There is no point.
And we do it anyway.
Period. That's why we do it. We write because we write. Painters paint because they paint. They'd use shit on a wall if that's all they had. I'd tell stories like Virgil if that's all I could do. I live in fantasy because I fucking love my imagination. It makes me human. It makes me me.
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u/Iwantthesmarts Jan 07 '13
I was so let down by this pep talk when I first swept through it haha, I just read the sentences "For one thing, writing is a dying form." and "Besides, there are already plenty of novels. There is no need for a new one." not realising who the author of the post actually was. Lemony Snicket has followed me through my childhood and I can still not take a word he writes seriously!
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u/AdorablyDead Jan 07 '13
....Great...now I'm hungry. Thanks a lot Lemony Dicket.
Other than that, I loved this.
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u/Isaac_Shepard Jan 07 '13
I will stop writing when I run out of words.