Dorothea-Brande-Becoming-a-Writer.pdf

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                                                       

                                  

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                                     

                                      

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                                    

                                               

                                               

                                            

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                                       

                                               

                                              



                                             

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                                               

                                               

                                             

                                              

                                             

                                               

            

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                                       

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                                                

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                                    

                            

  

                

                                

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                                       

                                            

  

 

   

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                                       

                                             

                                         

                                               

                                                 

                                             

                                           

                                              

                                                 

                

                                              

                                            *

I hasten to say that there are occasions when the words, “The next day, Conrad, etc.,” may be exactly the number of words and exactly the emphasis to be given to a transition. We are assuming for the moment that such a transition is, for the story you are engaged on, too abrupt.

           

                                             

                                             *

In his essay “The Art of Fiction,” in Partial Portraits. Macmillan

                                                *

See the story entitled “An Unwritten Novel” in Virginia Woolf’s Monday or Tuesday.

 

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                                    

                                               

                                              

                                               

                           

                       

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                                

                                                

         

                                           *

“that is matter” Due to the archaic nature of some of Ms. Brande’s expressions, I was uncertain whether this was a typo or merely an awkward or outdated phrasing. As the meaning isn’t confused, the sentence is rendered as it appears in the book.--Phenlandia † Another hellish phrasing. Again, the original phrasing found in the book has been maintained.

                                            *

In his latest book, It Was the Nightingale, Ford Madox Ford says, on just this point: “I may—and quite frequently do—plan out every scene, sometimes even every conversation, in a novel before I sit down to write it. But unless I know the history back to the remotest times of any place of which I am going to write

                                        

   I cannot begin the work. And I must know—from personal observation, not reading, the shapes of windows, the nature of doorknobs, the aspect of kitchens, the material of which dresses are made, the leather used in shoes, the method used in manuring fields, the nature of bus tickets. I shall never use any of these things in the book. But unless I know what sort of doorknob his fingers closed on how shall I— satisfactorily to myself—get my character out of doors?” This book will be found full of valuable sidelights on the process of literature.

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                                               

  

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                                              

                                     

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                                      

                                             *

Read any account of Mozart’s life, for example.

                                          

                                                

                                                 

                                               

     

                                                

                                                

 

       

                                         

                     

*

In 1934, the time of publication, mass-market publication of literary works in translation was virtually non-existent in the United States. Penguin Books, founded in 1935, and the expanded size and role of University presses, particularly Oxford’s, would radically alter this over the coming decades. Now a book must be both extremely recent and exceptionally obscure to be unavailable in English. All of the authors Ms. Brande mentions here are now freely (or cheaply) available at college libraries and bookstores around the world and on the Internet.--Phenlandia

                                              

                                             

    

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                               

                                                         

                                                      

    