Friday, September 7, 2007

Writing or Typing?

I was having a good email conversation with Agent E today and she made a comment about Armadillo being a literary novel. My first thought was "Huh?"and my second thought was to apologize. I emailed back a question about the book being literary and she sent back a comment that said, "Of course it's a literary novel you idiot. Don't you know anything about writing?" Okay, she didn't say that. Agent E is much, much nicer than that, but I'm sure that is what she was thinking.

It occurred to me that I've never really categorized what I write, and certainly never thought of it as literary. Literary smacks of being hoity toity, but I'm sure it just means that it is not strictly commercial. Every story is what it is, and basically can't be changed in my mind. Michelangelo once said that every sculpture already exists within the stone, and his job is to coax it out (not that I'm comparing Armadillo to David, but hey, it works for my purposes), and that's pretty much how I feel about writing. The book already exists somewhere on another plane, and my job is to be the conduit through which it gets translated.

Really, nothing more than a glorified typist to the universe.

On this date: In 1940, my dad was born. Happy Birthday Dad!

No comments: