Catch Hold Of Process: The Writing Lives Of Great Authors Drafted By Sarah Stodola File Format Leaflet

this point, everything about the process is a learning experience, Evidently, nobody has it easy, ./

Process was as a pleasure to read, from start to end, I'm a sucker for anything about the lives of authors, as well as their creative process, so this was right up my alley, Almost every chapter was interesting in its own right, save for a couple whose work/process didn't really grab me sorry, Richard Price and Edith Wharton and the Toni Morrison chapter in particular made me go pick up my current read, Home, and add a great many other books to my evergrowing wishlist.
If you're interested in the authors, or in writing, or even just hearing how creative giants came to be, I'd recommend picking this up, This book had been recommended by a member of a local writers group I'd attended, It includes a concise, and comprehensive glimpse into the writing styles, and lifestyles, ofwellknown authors, with a great summary paragraph at the end of each segment, I thought it was helpful, because it gave personal information on each, with some struggling to get anything written down, yet completing great works of literature, It shows how writing draws from the very depths of the author's heart and soul, and in every case incorporated parts of that person's life, developed, restructured into different persons by means of the characters in the novel.
The characters taking on a life of their own, and follow the path placed before them by the author, What was most amazing to me was the fact that many of the novels did, in fact, take years to bring to fruition, then finally, to publication, It gave me a sense of it being, somehow, okay, and to let the workinprogress do just that: progress, at its own time, in its own way, because that novel does, in the end, have a life of its own.
I definitely recommend this book as a valuable read, no matter by a reader, or writer, or reader/writer, . . lol really, I think everyone would find this an interesting book, I'm always game to read about creative processes, This collection was interesting, though not my favorite of the genre I'm wondering if it's because I'm used to indepth interviews with contemporary authors, which makes this sort of collection feel more removed.
I must say it's also disheartening how many of these authors seem determined to prove it's impossible to balance quality literary productivity and a healthy personal life: quite a lot of mistreated partners, squandered genius, mental health issues, limited output, and short lives in this bunch.
It's certainly worth a read for those interested in these authors or process in general though, Stodola collects interesting facts and leaves the reader with a number of entertaining vignettes,

Edith Wharton wrote in bed, carefully positioned for the best light, using a custom board and ink pot, tossing blue pages of her writing on the floor to be fetched by her hired help and typed up by a secretary.


In contrast, Franz Kafka severely deprived himself of physical comforts for fear they would distract him, only to admit as he was dying of tuberculosis that "illness and despair" can be "just as much of a distraction.
"

George Orwell and Richard Price undertook intense undercover research to immerse themselves in their chosen setting, The stories they could and did tell, . .

Jack Kerouac motivated himself by calculating his writing output as a batting average, though he clearly felt his most critical tool for writing was Benzedrine and a variety of other drugs.


Virginia Woolf switched to writing standing up purely out of sibling rivalry, after she heard someone complimenting her sister for having the endurance to spend all day on her feet painting.


James Joyce followed a multistage and meticulous research and writing process for each work, . . which got even longer once he was famous and realized he could write extra drafts and sell them to collectors,

Joyce's wife once yelled during an argument: "Why don't you write sensible books that people can understand" Seems very deserved, especially since he tried to convince her to sleep with other men just so that he could write about it.


Fitzgerald viewed his short stories as necessary moneymakers to be dashed off as quickly as possible so that he'd have enough money to take more time on his novels and fund his lavish social lifestyle with Zelda, though the balance never seemed to work out as planned.


Zadie Smith chooses an inspiration or scaffold to give a very basic structure for each novel, but for the most part she develops novels with an intense micro focus on each sentence, not moving forward until she's completely content with the sentence that came before, meaning she can spend months or years just getting the beginning pages right before building enough momentum to finish the rest more quickly.
Then time to revise, to "take off the top, let a little air in, " And finally, the best part, being finished, and "a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives, "

Junot Diaz is painfully, beautifully honest about his depression and his writing struggles, It took a long, agonizing road to finish each of his awardwinning works, and it hasn't gotten any easier, He feels deeply the strangeness of being "good at something I find very difficult, "

Margaret Atwood spent large parts of childhood at a remote insect research station with her father, She types slowly using only four fingers, which she feels is actually helpful for pacing and attention and as Stodola points out, that's "at least is twice as

many as David Foster Wallace used.
" She meticulously researches character names, and also says that even in her speculative fiction, she does "not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist," i.
e. The Handmaid's Tale being modeled on "the heavyhanded theocracy ofthcentury Puritan New England, with its marked bias against women, which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself.
" She often writes poems on themes she's grappling with before she can find their novel shape "It's almost as if the poems open something, like opening a room or a box or a pathway.
And then the novel can go in and see what else is there, "

Plus more on Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov, Salman Rushdie, Joan Didion, Ernest Hemingway, and Phillip Roth,
It's good to know that the greats were all crazy too,
Everyone has their own mountain to scale and I am not special,
Loved the 'Day in the life of a writer' sections they gave me a lot of great ideas to test out,
Very interesting read. I received an ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review,

Published by Amazon Publishing, January,

What are we looking for when we look at the lives of great writers I would assume many of us want the dirt the broken relationships, alcohol problems, madness and eccentric behaviors we associate with artistic types.
This is not a book about those things,

Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, is exactly what it says it is, These are not biographies of writers in the grand sense, but a focused look at the schedules, behaviors and work preferences of particularly successful and memorable authors, In the introduction, Stodola states her intent to create a book that is of interest to both writers and general readers, and while probably true, I think it may skew slightly more towards writers than fans of particular authors.
The information that has been rigorously gathered by Stodola and rigorously cited this book isend notes is fascinating, though occasionally on the dry side, There are bits of interesting trivia to be had, and lots of encouragement if you are looking for writers that succeeded despite strange or unexpected working habits,

All of the writers chosen are novelists, in that they have published at least one novel, and all began publication in theth andst centuries, The chapters each cover a pair of writers, placed together either because of a similarity or to compare and contrast, There are the NinetoFivers Kafka and Morrison, the Productive Procrastinators DFW and Richard Price, and others defined by their particular style or habits, Later chapters contrast the Social Butterfly Fitzgerald with the Lone Wolf Roth, The closing chapter looks at the different approaches of Margaret Atwood and Zadie Smith in relation to technology specifically the internet and social media, Each is straightforward and mostly undramatic, with lots of quotable facts sprinkled throughout, like Virginia Woolfs preference for purple ink, or Vladimir Nabokovs habit of writing in the bathtub.
Each authors entry ends with “A Day in the Writers Life” segment, which is interesting but unnecessary, as it really just sums up what was already covered in the longer text.


In the end, what Process does, aside from providing an enjoyable look at famous authors, is show us that there is no one correct or commendable way to write.
There is always a lot of talk about writers absolutely having to write something every day, establish set times and word counts, which the many examples in this book proves to be untrue, or at least nebulous.
There is no one way to write, and even the hardest circumstances dont have to limit a writers potential, if the drive is there, Joyce went blind, Woolf and DFW dealt with severe mental illness, Nabokov was a perpetual refugee, Morrison was a single mother, Kafka was thwarted by his family, Rushdie was driven into hiding by a fatwa and yet they all worked within their limits to the best of their abilities, and we are still reading their work and analyzing their lives today.


Crossposted at Booklikes: sitelink booklikes. com/post/ .