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Monday, February 28, 2011

Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood

Negotiating with the Dead

Negotiating with the Dead, by Margaret Atwood is a wonderful book for anyone who has the urge to write, be it novel, short stories or poetry. This book is a series of lectures she gave at Cambridge University on her experiences as a writer. In her introduction, she lists a long list of reasons various writers have said why they write. Here are some of those motives:
·        To record the world as it is.
·        To set down the past before it is forgotten.
·        Th excavate the past because it has been forgotten.
·        To satisfy my desire for revenge.
·        Because Ik new I had to keep writing or else I would die.
·        Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know that we are alive.
·        To produce order out of chaos.
·        To delight and instruct.
·        To please myself.
·        To express myself.
·        To create a perfect work of art.
·        To hold a mirror up to nature.
·        To hold a mirror up to the reader.
·        To thumb my nose at death.
·        To make money so that my children could have shoes.
·        To show the bastards.
·        Because to create is human.
·         Because to create is Godlike.
·        Because I hated the idea of having a job.
·        To justify my failure in school.
·        To thwart my parents.
·        To amuse and please the reader.
·        To amuse and please myself.
·        Compulsive logorrhea.
·        Because I fell into the embrace of the muse.
·        To experiment with new forms of perception.
·        To cope with depression.
·        For my children.
·        To speak for the dead.

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