I had begun with three authors that I would love to echo. Jo Nesbo, Haruki Murakami, and Colin Barrett.
When I told this to my girlfriend she hilariously grasped the point of the learning club much better than I could. And after talking to her there was no more doubt who I would go with.
When I told this to my girlfriend she hilariously grasped the point of the learning club much better than I could. And after talking to her there was no more doubt who I would go with.
I think the purpose of this exercise is not to fuss over who to pick but rather to PRACTICE paying close attention to how an author chooses words and constructs sentences
I think choosing an author means you will be studying how they handle the English or whatever language
if you are writing in English, then choose someone who writes in English
isn’t Jo Nesbo a translation?
My girlfriend over chat
Colin Barrett
I can't remember which short story of his was my first read. It was in the New Yorker and how honestly it depicted small town life blew me away. Though his setting was rural Ireland nothing felt foreign. Even though we didn't have oceans near us, I began seeing nearby Lake Michigan as my Atlantic.
I was not only blown away as reader, but even more as a writer. I remember people talking about the video DHH released to introduce his web application framework Ruby on Rails. In it he shows you how easy it is to start a blog with the new framework. I imagine a generation of developers being inspired by this and thinking I gotta do my work this way!
After devouring all of Barrett's work on the New Yorker and also reading the corresponding interviews (New Yorker likes to release an interview paired with a lot of the short stories it features) this inspired empowerment was what I felt. Like magic had struck me. Maybe it didn't look so easy, but it felt within grasp. It was tangible.
Of course my attempts at learning from him and mimicking him never led to any kind of shareable output. But it still led to a lot of good reading and a lot of good practice. I'm looking forward to echoing Barret deliberately for several weeks alongside other echoers who equally admire their own Narcissus.
To me such openers like this feel perfect:
I was not only blown away as reader, but even more as a writer. I remember people talking about the video DHH released to introduce his web application framework Ruby on Rails. In it he shows you how easy it is to start a blog with the new framework. I imagine a generation of developers being inspired by this and thinking I gotta do my work this way!
After devouring all of Barrett's work on the New Yorker and also reading the corresponding interviews (New Yorker likes to release an interview paired with a lot of the short stories it features) this inspired empowerment was what I felt. Like magic had struck me. Maybe it didn't look so easy, but it felt within grasp. It was tangible.
Of course my attempts at learning from him and mimicking him never led to any kind of shareable output. But it still led to a lot of good reading and a lot of good practice. I'm looking forward to echoing Barret deliberately for several weeks alongside other echoers who equally admire their own Narcissus.
To me such openers like this feel perfect:
My town is nowhere you have been, but you know its ilk. A roundabout off a national road, an industrial estate, a five-screen Cineplex, a century of pubs packed inside the square mile of the town’s limits. The Atlantic is near; the gnarled jawbone of the coastline with its gull-infested promontories is near. Summer evenings, and in the manure-scented pastures of the satellite parishes the Zen bovines lift their heads to contemplate the V8 howls of the boy racers tearing through the back lanes.
I'd have echoed your girlfriend. My first thought was, "Nobody can go for Brostoevsky in here, he's a Russkie."
Keni join us !