A Commonplace Book

Someone once observed that there are at bottom two kinds of writers, those who write what they know and those who write in order to know.

Unfortunately, in today's market, there are two kinds of writers: 1) recently published authors and 2) unpublished (which also includes long ago published) authors.

Henry Miller noted that there are two kinds of writers: those who write the Truth and those who don't; simple as that.

Borges once said that there are two kinds of writers: those who favour the world of narrative and those who favour the world of politics.

There are two kinds of writers: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.

There are two kinds of writers. One is a writer who's always telling you things you never thought of, or didn't know before. The other is a writer who's telling you things thatyou do know but that you've never quite formulated for yourself.

Wouldn't you agree that there are at least two kinds of writers? And wouldn't you concur further that one of those types is in love with words, and the other type is in love with imagery?

Recently, the eminent author, Cynthia Ozick, wrote an essay where she talked about two kinds of writers. She said there are writers who write from memory (and experience) and those who write from ideas although sometimes the distinction is not so clear cut.

"There are two kinds of writers --- the great ones, who give you truths, and the lesser ones, who give you only themselves."

...in this town [Hollywood] there are two kinds of writers: established and emerging. If you're among the latter, you begin not with the written word, but with an idea.

There are two kinds of writers, I think. There are those who know what they are going to write from the beginning to the end. And there are those who just sit down, put the pen in their hand and, like water-skiing, let the boat pull them.

I think there are two kinds of writers working in Hollywood. The first is the kind we hate to admit exist, but they do. He calculates the odds, analyzes the marketplace, and writes a paint-by-numbers script that, shock of shocks, gets bought and produced and he's got a career. As a hack. It's a job, like making rivets or putting bolts on car axles. The writing is probably solid, serviceable, but without passion, and it shows.

The second is someone who loves writing or loves the film business, wants to write from the soul. Probably does write from the soul. And somehow squeaks through that barely open door to a sale and a career. And then takes tons of meetings: "we adore your work, we want to be in business. We've got this idea, it's about two cops who go undercover as women, Lethal Weapon meets Tootsie. Lots of crude jokes, hijinks and action, you want to write it for us? Warner's loves the idea and Tom [Cruise or Hanks, it doesn't matter] is dying to wear a dress. Guaranteed greenlight, whaddayasay?" The right answer, obvious to those of us watching at home, is "NO!!! AAAAGHHH!" (insert rapidly running footsteps here.)

Isaiah Berlin once said that there are two kinds of writers, hedgehogs and foxes. He said the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one thing.

There are two kinds of writers: talented and gifted. Talented writers CONVEY while gifted writers TRANSLATE.

"Vittorini in his diary distinguishes between two kinds of writers: Those who make you think, 'Yes that's the way it is' and those who make you think, 'I never supposed it could be like that.'"

Verity Lambert has said that there are two kinds of writers: those that have no interest in a production after they have delivered the script and those who fret over every detail.

She says that there are two kinds of writers, good and bad, yet the ones who are successful are equally good or bad, what sets them apart is that they persist and have discipline.

It is well-known that there are two kinds of writers: one wishes to consider language transparent, able to be shared by everyone, and the other wishes to invent a language of his or her own, which is obscure.

Anthony Burgess said there are two kinds of writers: A-writers and B-writers. A-writers are storytellers, B-writers are users of language.

There are, it has been said, two kinds of writers, horizontal and vertical. No value judgment between the two. But I am certainly a vertical writer, one whose imagery tends to work in layers and puns, so that thoughts wear garments that are turtles all the way down.

I think there are two kinds of writers and I'm not saying that it's only about exilic writers or immigrant writers but all writers: those who reinforce what the public thinks, the conventional values, and those who constantly interrogate the conventional values.

There are two kinds of writers. Those who write for their own pleasure and those who write to sell.

A graphic artist friend of mine, who is much smarter than I am, said, "It's very simple. There are two kinds of writers. One responds to life itself. The other responds to the history of the art."

Marcel Proust wrote in a cork-lined room to shut out all but the sound of his own memories. Whenever recent writers write of writing they tend to refer to Proust and his soundproof room, but to write of writing is already perhaps to take the path of Proustian self-absorption and to reveal which one of the two sorts of writers one is. The one sort has himself for subject and inspiration, the other looks outward and marvels at the otherness of others.

Forrest G. Robinson begins his essay by drawing a distinction between two kinds of writers, those who self-consciously construct literary meaning, like Hawthorne and Melville, and, on the other hand, those like Mark Twain whose work "is probably unconscious in origin."

"There are two kinds of writers," he said. "Those who don't like to read their work, and those who do. I've always been in the latter group."

Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledly-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awkful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they're done they're done.

I am a basher. Most men are bashers, and most women are swoopers....

Writers who are swoopers, it seems to me, find it wonderful that people are funny or tragic or whatever, worth reporting, without wondering why or how people are alive in the first place.

Bashers, while ostensibly making sentence after sentence as efficient as possible, may actually be breaking down seeming doors and fences, cutting their ways through seeming barbed-wire entanglements, under fire and in an atmosphere of mustard gas, in search of answers to these eternal questions: "What in heck should we be doing? What in heck is really going on?"