The Gospel of Cary

(this might be a record breaking list)

1. "Where something is found, there look again."
2. The story is in the details and consequences
3. "I know well from my husband & I ridin around in the country side..."
4. It's okay to think of the dead as brats
5. "fondle details"
6. "She's not doing a dad-gum thing"
7. Merry-Go-Sorry starts with the Cicada in Cary's lemon dish
8. Whatever you're writing, you have to include from the here & now-- your life, contemporary, no matter what time you're writing in
9. A good story absorbs everything in it's path and just keeps going
10. If you open with action, then you have to move into inner character
11. You have to write in scene-- moment by moment in real time-- smell? sound?
12. Find the Book of Lists.
13. Turn the readers' expectations against themselves
14. "unusual emotional flavors"
15. Become a tour guide in Colonial Williamsburg (to get over shyness)
16. Teaching is good for social interaction and editing skill improvements
17. Write 2 pages a day-- you can make a career off that
18. you have to KEEP ON
19. Cary's been an "emerging writer" for years
20. Cary is goo.
21. Everyone copies-- you can learn something everywhere
22. Read lots of nonfiction-- you have to write what you know AND keep adding to it
23. Anything you find interesting belongs in your work (what you love)
24. You can never have too many books.
25. Look at the over size books with photos (in the Library)... take a magnifying glass.
26. Every writer is regional in his own way.
27. "queasy makin"
28. We write because of our romance with the books we love
29. Take notes on stories- but don't know how it ends
30. Every story has a beginning, a muddle, and an end
31. you should only write about characters who are in trouble and at the end of their ropes.
32. If you have sympathy and empathy for your characters- the reader will too.
33. "Notes like vegetable stew"
34. "Orphaned anecdotes"
35. Memory exercise: Over the weekend, make a list of the names of everyone you've ever met.
36. Learn to remember/memorize
37. "a great packer of suitcases and slammer of doors"
38. We hear the voices of our family when we write
39. The market favors short story cycles (intertwined short stories like Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio)
40. Just dream it. It's more alike than different between then and now" (on writing a period piece)
41. It's okay to write a story because you want to write a story that includes The Beegees
42. Every Story must have 3 elements: 1) a precise & suspenseful plot, 2) a sense of urgency (burning) and 3) a sense of ownership over the material.
43. Your stories belong to you. Don't talk about them00 it takes the pressure off of you to write it.
44. "Follow the pain"
45. write about human experience.
46. Use all of the depths of the language available to you.
47. Don't show off your research, make it organic, make historical dialogue/regionalism sound normal and contemporary.
48. Dialogue is written for the eye, not the ear. Do dialect/history with a very light hand
49. Any story that gives you delight should be part of your emotional life permanently.
50. we write not because we have something to say, but because we feel when we read
51. When you have something to say, you write an editorial
52. anything human is political
53. you can only get over the wall of frustration by reaching it and letting it build up
54. "the well of fear & loneliness"
55. whatever should happen in your story is what happens next to you when you get up and go to the next room.
56. Do character analysis-- know and commit to your characters
57. Faulkner was a great writer but he also wrote a lot of crap
58. No writer is so consistent that they give other writers a reason not to write
59. Don't lose the reader or get cagey-- don't trick the reader-- they get unhappy that way
60. 1st person narrators are notoriously unreliable
61. don't make your reader feel dumb
62. Language is a clumsy tool.
63. He who accepts good advice increases his ability
64. You can learn from the aesthetics of a writer you don't like
65. Poetry is good for fiction
66. mice characters= good, especially when they die horrifically and rejuvenate the next day
67. landscape is character
68. no more wine for me at dinner.
69. there should aways be some element of mystery and suspense
70. Revision is 90% of writing
71. You don't have to find the answers in a story-- sometimes you just ask more questions.
72. writing fiction is part memory and a lot of invention.

At the end of the semester, I'll publish a giant book list from all of the writers' reading recommendations (except Bapsi because I didn't get hers).