![]() There are lots of ways to do it, but it is a lifelong discipline, how to see yourself somewhat dispassionately and not too defensively. ![]() But I think that the main way you can do it is by reading a lot and seeing how other writers do it and how they achieve some sense of irony and perspective toward themselves. And every time you get into a situation where you’re making the same mistake over and over again, you can take a step back and ask, “What’s going on here?” You could listen very carefully to people who criticize your character. ![]() PHILLIP LOPATE: Well, you can keep a diary for one thing. How can a learning writer come to achieve those things? You also suggest having distance from yourself and to be both self-amused and self-curious. INSCAPE: In your chapter “To Show and To Tell” in The Art of the Personal Essay, you talk about making yourself into a character. ![]() After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing at multiple schools and now the director of the nonfiction graduate program at Columbia University, where he also teaches writing. Some of his most recent publications are Portrait Inside My Head and To Show and to Tell: the Craft of Literary Nonfiction. ![]() Phillip Lopate was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, and received a BA from Columbia in 1964, and a doctorate from the Union Graduate School in 1979. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |