Chapter XIV: Keep a Slovenly, Headlong, Impulsive, Honest Diary

Posted on 2007-Dec-5 at 04:31 - Post Comment

"Now THIS is an inevitable truth: whatever you write will reveal your personality, and whatever you are will show through in your writing. [...]

Now to get to writing the truth, i.e.,what you really feel, and to speak it straight out, tearing aside all gauzes and films of circumspection or intentionalness or gentility or assumed brutality if you do not know what this means now, write twenty more stories and a true, careless, slovenly, impulsive, honest diary every day of your life and you will. And you must in time learn to write from your true self not only in your letters and diary, but in fiction. "For a lie is even more annoying in a story than in a conversation, " said Chechov."