Raymond Carter's notes

In the introductory chapter to Fires: essays, poems, stories by Raymond Carver, he reveals his rules to writing, that he will "someday put on a three-by-five card and tape to the wall beside (his) desk."

I'm listing them here for my own reference, because when I have a desk I'll need to write them on notecards and tape them above it, directly underneath "SHOW - DON'T TELL."

- "write a little every day, without hope and without despair." (Quoted from Isak Dinesen)
- "Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing." Ezra Pound
- "...and suddenly everything became clear." Anton Chekhov
- "No cheap tricks." Geoffrey Wolff
- "No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put at just the right place." - Isaac Babel, "Guy de Maupassant"



Quotes
"It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill down the reader's spine - the source of artistic delight, as Nabakov would have it."

"In the end, the satisfaction of having done our best, and the proof of that labor, is the one thing we can take into the grave."

"There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, ... or else ... there simply won't be a story. What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linking together to make up the visible action of the story. But it's also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just underneath the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things."

"V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, in passing.'"

"The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things-like no one else. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to light the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right, they can hit all the notes."