Thanks to Kottke for linking us to a short piece about writing style by Kurt Vonnegut. I feel as though I've read this before, but it's more important that I read it now. I started writing again recently. Not in this blog, but on paper and in Microsoft Word. I started four different novels last year. Ideas were coming from every source and orifice. They've resumed.

Vonnegut gives the best advice with brilliant brevity. He always has. For instance, when speaking of the arts in A Man Without a Country:

They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

That is something I constantly repeat to myself or else I would stop writing very soon after starting.

The children, now dead, had turned into obese hard-boiled eggs. He lifted one of the smallest but couldn't support it with all his strength. The former child hit the tiles with a vile splash. No matter how gently he touched any egg, each cracked and spilled its milky innards.

That's a dream one of my characters has. After reading Vonnegut's suggestions, I have to reread my writings and ask myself: Is this really the way I write? Is it clear? Is it necessary? Another literary genius I know once told me that sometimes the very thing that needs to be cut is the thing you most want to remain.

Who knew that writing books could be so complicated?

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