#chee writes

[lyqiche]

cuffs pt.2

"resorting to handcuffs.. I won't show mercy when they're off~"

[sonatine]

Writing advice from Alexander Chee

[hyperfixating-rn-brb]

art for the most heartbreaking book I've ever read.

[days-of-reading]

Alexander Chee, “Annie Dillard and the Writing Life,” in Mentors, Muses & Monsters (ed. Elizabeth Benedict, 2009)

[virtuouslibertines69]

"I burn from the inside out, like a lightning-struck tree: the outside whole, the inside, that carried the lightnings charge, a coal. At other times, I feel empty, transparent, a child of the wind. Touching nothing, nothing touching me. And alternating between these states, with no warning as to when one will turn into the other." — Edinburgh, Alexander Chee

[pastellmochi]

[semperintrepida]

Too much writing about sex tries to either make it prettier or more serious, sexier or funnier or shocking, or anything, really, except what it is. On its own terms, sex is information. This I learned from reading Salter… Reading Salter’s sentences, I saw what I knew of sex, that sex is a moment in which you are known and knowable. Whatever it is you desire appears from behind the veil of shame or fantasy or nostalgia, or sheer impossibility, and in its presence, you are revealed to yourself. Porn obscures this; porn is about the fantasy of the viewer, not the mixed fantasies, realities, and disappointments of the actors in the room. Truth might get you off, but porn doesn’t deal in maybes, was never interested in unreliable, unpredictable truth-telling. When my teacher told me to read James Salter, what she meant was that this kind of sex writing is about you, the reader, in a way a fantasy isn’t. It describes sex so that it tells you something about the story and the characters and yourself, all at once.

—Alexander Chee, "Sex and Salter"

[coffeeworldsasaki]

Oh Sylvia Feketekuty wrote the short story in nevarra and luck in the garden!!! I love luck in the garden, in case Dorian appears I hope she's his writer because she really had his tone perfectly

[nataliewaitesnotesapp]

“So if you are reading this, and you’re a writer, and you, like me, are gripped with despair, when you think you might stop: Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes — and make no mistake, it is already here — be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love, and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get there?” — Alexander Chee

[postpar]

[elwenyere]

“Sometimes the writer writes one novel, then another, then another, and the first one he sells is the first one the public sees, but usually, the debut novel is not the first novel the writer wrote. There’s a private idea of the writer, known to the writer and whoever rejected him previously, and a public one, visible only in publication. Each book is something of a mask of the troubles that went into it, no matter how autobiographical it is, and so is the writer’s visible career.”

-- Alexander Chee, from "The Autobiography of My Novel"

[ceeturnalia]

[hyperfixating-rn-brb]

I have thrown a book across a room exactly once.

a paperback.

it was the final book of a trilogy, even passages would be blacked out, pages printed to look burned, torn out, water damaged beyondmmediately readability. but every chapter read revealed more of what had been illegible.

the characters fight against their written fates, but every move only advances the inevitable.

inexorably, the end comes and everything burns.

im full on sobbing, ugly crying like you wouldn't believe. I chuck the book.

my name is called from downstairs. my parents. what did they want?

for me to get them a chocolate bar from the kitchen.

time and a place, people.

I still can't bring myself to read the last 100 pages of that book. maybe someday.

[bongboyblog]

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[marnz]

You want vivid writing. How do we get vivid writing? Verbs, first. Precise verbs. All of the action on the page, everything that happens, happens in verbs. The passive voice needs gerunds to make anything happen. But too many gerunds together on the page makes for tinnitus: running, sitting, speaking, laughing, inginginginging. No. Don't do it. The verbs tell a reader whether something happened once or continually, what is in motion, what is at rest. Gerunds are lazy, you don't have to make a decision and soon, everything is happening at the same time, pell-mell, chaos. Don't do that. Also, bad verb choices mean adverbs. More often than not, you don't need them. Did he run quickly or did he sprint? Did he walk slowly or did he stroll or saunter?

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

[alexanderchee]

I really enjoyed my conversation with Tejas Srinivasan for his podcast Cultural Mixtapes. We spoke of my editing process for Best American Essays 2022, my writing process now, abandoned spaceships, and my lifelong habit of compulsively buying every book my writing heroes mention.