Learning to write

 My education is spotty, but my notebooks are full of remarks by writers who have talked about wrestling with their own work. I seem to learn that way.

Here are a few examples of things writers have said that have helped me:

Flannery O’Connor said this about the education of a short-story writer:

 

The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then to try to discover what you have done. The time to think of technique is when you’ve actually got the story is front of you.

 

Claire Keegan’s stories seem fated or destined — like Sophocles’ plays. She said this to some students who were interested in what makes a story work:

 

Good stories for me end inevitably: after they finish you feel there is only one thing that could have happened, and that is the thing that happened.

 

After reading Arthur Conan Doyle as a boy, I gravitated toward a different kind of story — one that had less suspense, less adventure, less action, less plot. I found that hard to explain until I ran across this observation from William Trevor:

 

You don’t have to have a plot in a short story but you do have to have a point.

 

I started with Flannery O’Connor’s helpful remark on the education of a writer. Roberto Bolaño, considering the same topic, said this:

 

Reading is always more important than writing.

 

• Sources: Alas, the only source I’m sure of is Claire Keegan’s remark, which is from a transcript given of a talk to students at St. Columba’s College, Dublin, Ireland. It’s headed “Claire Keegan and ‘Foster’” and is here:

http://www.sccenglish.ie/2014/03/claire-keegan-and-foster.html

I found it through The Fortnightly, a site and newsletter by a remarkable teacher named Julian Girdham. It’s here:

https://www.juliangirdham.com

I’d guess the Flannery O’Connor quote comes from her essay “Writing Short Stories” but have not had time to check. That quotation, like those from Trevor and Bolaño, are from an old notebook.