Speaking of writing advice that I’ve found on line – and this is old advice that I’ve given and been given a thousand times, but that has been lost to me for quite a while – writing should be fun.
I know I admire the living hell out of Flaubert’s struggling on his chaise lounge for days at a time, wrestling with a single sentence. I envy his migraines as he scratched out and replaced a single word a dozen times with synonyms and antonyms and, I don’t know, hieroglyphs I imagine.
I have sustained for months at a time with tuna fish and coffee, and thought myself more the artist for it, and maybe I was, but my writing has always been its best when I have enjoyed it. When I’ve surprised myself, taken on something new, or taken on something old in a new way. When I’ve learned from what I’m doing.
So last week, I rewrote a book called What I Know About Boys by Louis Redmond, published in 1952. Each page of text was mirrored by a black-and-white picture of a boy or some boys. Sometimes I rewrote the entire passage. Sometimes I changed a particular phrase. Sometimes I changed just a word. Sometimes I was sarcastic, sometimes parodic, sometimes sentimental, sometimes sincere – and every combination of those things.
I had in mind, initially, that the copyright of the book must, by now, be expired, and I would be able to reprint the book in my own fine way, but, apparently I don’t understand copyright laws, and it might be another half century before this gem hits bookshelves (e-bookshelves or the other kind).
But, still and seriously, that’s not the point. I enjoyed the writing – in process and product.
