Libby

I enjoyed this prompt @Seagreen . At first I thought I wouldn’t have time to enter the comp this month but being able to work on something I’d already written gave me fresh energy. My piece still needs a bit more work but the exercise you gave us was very helpful and one to be remembered.

This is from my novel. It’s 1937. Hester is shortly to leave school and has asked her father if she can have flying lessons. He’s said no, it’s too dangerous. That’s the novel’s inciting incident. The is the next scene, told from her father’s pov.

412 words

In Worcester Cathedral, Hester’s father Frederick Longley gazed at the vaulted ceiling…[Read more]

Yes, Salter’s detachment. Is that what makes his writing interesting? I think it may be – for me anyway.

John, I wouldn’t press Salter on you, or anyone, but his prose is an example of American spareness if you ever want to investigate same.

@sandra

The short stories are very good, Sandra. I liked a Sport and a Pastime but it can feel dated even though the writing was, for me, compelling. Salter can fall into the trap of his generation. Some of his writing about women can seem as if he didn’t ask the women around him how they thought and felt. On the other hand he’s also a very…[Read more]

I posted too soon. My comment may look as though I’m suggesting you don’t, Daeds, which I certainly didn’t mean! Your study of Salter brings a clarity and atmosphere to your writing which I’m sure it would have anyway. It’s interesting to think, in this influences process, how much we’re drawn to authors who provoke writerly neurones that we…[Read more]

James Salter has (had) a wonderful style.

Seems OK, both in the ‘text’ option and the ‘visual’.

I’m testing!

🙂

🙂