Have no unreasonable fear of repetition. True, the repetition of a particular word several times in the same paragraph can strike a jarring note, but ordinarily the problem arises differently. The story is told of a feature writer who was doing a piece on the United Fruit Company. He spoke of bananas once; he spoke of bananas twice; he spoke of bananas yet a third time, and now he was desperate. “The world’s leading shippers of the elongated yellow fruit,” he wrote. A fourth banana would have been better. — James J. Kilpatrick
Category Archives: From the Mouths of Experts
Amy Tan’s Lonely, ‘Pixel-by-Pixel’ Writing Method
Amy Tan, author of THE JOY LUCK CLUB on her writing process:
“As a result, I err on the side of going into too much detail when I do research and write. I abandon 95 percent of it. But I love it. It’s part of my writing process. I never consider it a waste of time. I never know where I’m going when I write. It’s the same reason I never come to conclusions about anything…. We have to turn it in—and at that point, you are guided by craft. You get to do your anarchy, try this and try that, try everything, and then apply craft.”
Read the entire article here.
Sally forth and be TANingly writeful.
— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
MADD FICTIONAL 