Fundamentals – WORD CHASE with Adair V

October 20, 2015June 2, 2018Adair V

Writers on Writing: Joyce Carol Oates

From The Guardian’s series “Writers on Writing”, Joyce Carol Oates gives us some wise but sobering advice.

June 27, 2013June 1, 2018Adair V

Does Collaboration Inhibit Creativity?

More and more, disparate and far-flung groups are asked to communicate, cooperate, work together better. But have we taken things too far?

March 13, 2013June 2, 2018Adair V

What makes for good writing?

What makes for good writing? There are a thousand ways to go about answering this question. One might offer examples—Shakespeare, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf. These are writers who have produced good writing. But listing them doesn’t get at why they are good. And it offers no help to the writer who is wondering how to […]

January 19, 2012June 2, 2018Adair V

Truths about Writers: Ann Beattie

In her new book, Mrs Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, Ann Beattie herself appears in the text: “I hoped to get close to the truth, but my own writerly instincts may have obscured her as much as her own banal pronouncements.” Well, if these ‘truths’ are any example, it’s possible…

October 3, 2011June 2, 2018Adair V

In Search of Cancer in Literature

The word cancer comes from the Greek word karkinos meaning “crab”. It was coined by Hippocrates, who thought tumours resembled these creatures. Cancers were known of in ancient times, but little could be done to arrest the disease. Early medical techniques were drastic and, without anaesthesia, tortuous. In more recent literature, stories about cancer focus more on psychological and sociological dimensions of the disease. It serves as a metaphor for the death that awaits us all.

April 13, 2011June 1, 2018Adair V

Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth

Borrowing a term from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, Joseph Campbell asserts there is a monomyth common to all cultures, the journey of an archetypal hero that happens to be found in all world mythologies. His idea of the hero’s journey has stirred controversy over the years with many suggesting it’s too male-centered or even rejecting it altogether, finding it to be so general it’s rendered meaningless.

March 21, 2011June 1, 2018Adair V

Category: Fundamentals

Writers on Writing: Joyce Carol Oates

Does Collaboration Inhibit Creativity?

What makes for good writing?

Truths about Writers: Ann Beattie

In Search of Cancer in Literature

Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth

Rules for Writers: Hilary Mantel

Rules For Writers: Jonathan Franzen

What use the Western Canon?

In the grip of writer’s block…