“CRAFTING DISCOVERY” by Susan Griffin
The best writing has an air of revelation. Whatever a work communicates, whether new facts, new insights, or a new angle on history, the sense it conveys of encountering something new comes as much from the sound and style of the prose as it does from any content. The secret lies in the attitude of the writer. While to write what you know is good advice, it is equally important to go beyond what you know, to discover as you write. Discoveries occur through research of course but also through the craft of writing itself. As you strive for more clarity, beauty, dimensionality and attempt to make an event palpable or a character vivid, new worlds of meaning will open up to you.
SUSAN GRIFFIN’s most recent work is an anthology she co-edited,Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World. Among her nineteen books, A Chorus of Stones, the Private Life of War was a New York Times Notable Book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Northern California Book Award. Celebrated for her elegant prose as well as her innovations in literary form, she has been the recipient of an NEA Grant, a Macarthur Grant for Peace and International Cooperation and a Guggenheim Fellowship
