Flaws can be beautiful…

Thanks for this – has been a good read!

jb says: Must be about time to expect something else from Thomson. Wouldn’t that be nice?

2. I detest the formulaic advice usually given to writers (some of which may, of course, be valid under particular circumstances). May I quote Marilynne Robinson, one of my favourite writers, and someone who is a serious teacher and thinker as well?

‘I feel there is a great deal of highly conventional thinking in almost every area of life that must be discarded in order for a writer to make something with integrity in terms of that writer’s understanding.’

And

‘I always tell my students that you can do anything you can get away with, that implausibility is a problem of style. If people bring issues of plausibility to bear on what you’re doing, you’re not doing it well enough.’

She states the latter in the context of a question about her use of the omniscient first-person (!) in Housekeeping – a brilliant novel – but I think it applies to all aspects of writing.

Here’s the link to the full interview with her:

http://www.ewu.edu/willowsprings/interviews/robinson.pdf

jb says: Thanks for this, Lee. I loved Housekeeping. One of the few novels, out of the hundreds (thousands?) I’ve read, which will always be with me.