Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

    
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
 

Their Eyes Were Watching God 

by Zora Neale Hurston


  Description  

One of the most important work of 20th Century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston’s beloved 1937 classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring southern love stroy sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair – skinned, fiercely independent janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston’s masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published – perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.  


About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston

 Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. An author of four novel ( Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and seraph on the Suwanee,
1948); two Books of folklore ( Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography ( Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in.1927. She was born on january 7,1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960. In 1937, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravestie with this epitaph: “Zora Neale Horston : A Genius of the South.”

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