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fiction writing

Edward P. Jones's message to the author.

‘Just Write a Story’

July 15, 2014

Though Jones was gentle about the story’s deficiencies, it was clear he was frustrated. I think this was because it was clear to him that the basics of humanity shouldn’t be that difficult to express. He spent an hour and a half going over the story with me sentence by sentence. In the end, his advice was simple: “Just write a story.”

Introduction

  As Chris Ware makes so abundantly clear in his outstanding (and bitterly accurate) cover illustrations, writers have always been a favorite topic of other writers. Their private foibles and public follies make ready fodder for gossip and snark [...]