As We Were Saying

Sewanee Writers on Writing

Wyatt Prunty, Megan Roberts, Adam Latham, Wyatt Prunty, Megan Roberts, Adam Latham

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780807175774
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

Every summer for the past thirty years, the Sewanee Writers' Conference has gathered a community of writers for two weeks of workshops, readings, talks, and meetings focused on the craft and art of writing. This book is a selection of craft talks delivered during the conference over the last several years. Some essays focus on one or two authors, some focus on texts, while others cast their regard more broadly. All are written in response to questions generated by the process of writing, as masters of the craft candidly report challenges they confront and the means by which they work to resolve such issues. The eighteen essays encompass poetry, fiction, and playwriting, investigating questions of language, character, design, and meaning, with nuanced readings of particular authors and works alongside more wide-ranging reflections on craft. Designed for audiences of writers and readers across multiple levels and backgrounds, the essays collected in As We Were Saying offer original, insightful arguments about the craft of writing and the power of literature.

INDEX

Aarne-Thompson Classification System, 202

About Fiction (Morris), 204

Abrams, M. H., 65–68

abstractions, 191–92, 214

adjectives, 201

adultery, 184–85

advice, 54, 66, 113, 118–19, 128–29, 171, 199, 204, 208–10, 214, 231

Aeneid (Virgil), 59

aesthetics of ambivalence, 84–97

Albers, Josef, 104

alchemy, 55, 79–80, 83, 211

allegory, 164

All the King’s Men (Warren), 50–52

alterations affecting a poem, 193–203

“Always” (Strand), 99

ambivalence, 88–97

American literature, 159–60

American poetry, 154–55

The American Scene (James), 92–93

“American Scenes (1904–1905)” (Justice), 91–93, 96

anagrams, 111–12

“Animals in Heaven,” 11–24

animation, 32, 35, 43

“A&P” (Updike), 228–29

architecture and narrative: and the Bunny Lane House, 38–40; and childhood memories, 25–27; form and function, 29–32; and Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World, 35–38; and libraries, 32–35; and shaping stories, 27–30, 35–38; and Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night, 40–44

Arduini, Franca, 63

“Aren’t You Happy for Me?” (Bausch), 208

Aristotle, 16, 23, 57–58, 63

Ars Poetica (Horace), 58

artifice, 88, 108

The Art of Fiction (Gardner), 47

“An Arundel Tomb” (Larkin), 241–42

The Atlantic (magazine), 117

“Aubade” (Larkin), 69, 237, 241–42, 245

Auden, W. H., 90

Audubon: A Vision (Warren), 160–69

Audubon, John James, 155, 161–69

Austen, Jane, 116

authenticity, 68

autobiographical poets, 98

“Automat” (Hopper), 107

backstory, 36, 47

Baldwin, James, 116, 117, 119–22, 124

The Ballad of the Sad Café (McCullers), 172

Barnstone, Willis, 217

Barthes, Roland, 195

“The Bath” (Carver), 116

Bausch, Richard, 208

“The Beautiful Changes” (Wilbur), 240–41, 244

beginning of a story: in as few words as possible, 228–29; and magic, 16–20; and opening pages of novels, 127–36; and the process of writing, 211–12; and revision, 123–24. See also opening paragraphs

Bell, Madison Smartt, 27

Bellow, Saul, 209

Beloved (Morrison), 55

Bennington College, 179–81

Bernard Shaw (Holr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Story
• Narrative Architecture and the Inhabitation of Story
• The Character of Our Character: Reality, Actuality, and Technique in Fiction and Nonfiction
• “Is There a Plot in This Poem?”
• What Makes a Play a Play?
• Seven Types of Ambivalence: On Donald Justice
• S Is for Something: Mark Strand and Artistic Identity
• The Train Stops Here: The Optimism of Revision
• The Starting Line
• Unspeakable: Speech on Stage
• Birds of America: Or, Tell Me a Story about Farming, Haunted Houses, and Poetry in Motion
• Haunted
• Why Literature Can Save Us
• Inside “Out, Out—”
• Technique Makes Imagination Matter More
• Metaphor: The Fundament of Imaginative Writing
• The Directing Sentence
• Rationed Compassion: Philip Larkin and Richard Wilbur
• Contributors
• Index