Stories, Essays, Reviews
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 […]
Though the entries in this collection were first performed at the Women of Letters salon events, nothing is lost in the written word. In fact, the individual voices of the authors shine through, sometimes lighthearted and whimsical, sometimes poignant and nostalgic. Sincerely is a potent tribute to an art that is shown to be not only a lot of fun but also very much alive.
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.
There is the person who writes. Someone much like you and me. Someone who sleeps, eats, works, gets bored, worries, cooks, shops, reads to his children, laughs, and gets headaches. And there is the ‘author’. This is someone who exists as a separate being on a higher plane. We think of him as descending occasionally to launch books or give interviews; otherwise, he exists in a place apart from the rest of us, breathing in the rarified air of inspiration, nibbling the manna of creativity, producing one beautifully crafted passage after another.
There is a unique relationship between art and engagement. According to Eva Sallis, “A writer is neither exactly private nor exactly expert.” What a writer brings to an issue, however, is an ability to represent, to communicate effectively and emotionally, to convince.
Practice, trust, and judgment are essentials of good writing. How you can employ them to improve your work.
