William Landay

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Archives for 2011

What Creativity Means

Everything Is a Remix

Creativity is not about making something out of nothing. It is about making something new out of old things. When we say that an artist creates, what we mean is that he refines, reshapes, remixes. He synthesizes. I am not creative, in the sense that I have no ability to manufacture novels out of thin air. I am an exceptional remixer.

Lately, desperate to get my new novel started, I have been suffering from a wrongheaded dread of influence, formula, and topicality, when in truth these are the very things I should be looking to. I have been suffering from a lack of input, starving the creative machine of fuel — ideas — then wondering why the engine will not start.

Wannabe writers ask, “Is there a book in me?,” then lose themselves in introspection, like a dog chasing its own tail. It is the wrong question. Look outward.

Image: Kirby Ferguson – “Everything Is a Remix.”

Quote of the Day

I can quite understand people wanting to know my writings, but I cannot sympathise with anybody wanting to know me.

Vladimir Nabokov, who “despised the idea of the author as celebrity” (via)

Sunday poem: “Tonight I Can Write” by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, “The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.”

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

(Translated by W.S. Merwin. From Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, first published in 1924, when the poet was about 20 years old. Via.)

Blurbathon

More blurbs continue to roll in for Defending Jacob. I won’t reprint them all here. I hate to turn this blog into an endless infomercial for my books. But if you’re curious, I put together a page to gather up the advance praise — read: blurbs — for the book. My sincere thanks to the authors who chimed in recently, Chevy Stevens, Stephen Frey and John Lutz, as well as the earlier contributors, Phillip Margolin, Lisa Gardner and Nicholas Sparks.

Seth Godin: Ten Bestsellers

This video is not new. It is Seth Godin’s presentation at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in February 2008. But I loved it at the time and still do. It is one of the few discussions of the digital publishing revolution that get me excited about the future rather than just scaring the hell out of me. Godin is a great speaker, self-promoter, and motivator, but there’s plenty of ideas here for ordinary mortals, too.

I recommended the video to a writer-friend today who is gearing up to promote his book, then I had trouble tracking it down on the web, mostly because I could not remember the name of it. So here it is, John: “10 Bestsellers: Using New Media, New Marketing, and New Thinking to Create 10 Bestselling Books.” Enjoy.

[Update 5.5.2023: This video is no longer available.]