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While reading writers of great formulatory power — henry james, santayana, proust — i find i can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. reading henry james, for example, i have muttered to myself, "c’mon, henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so i can get some reading done." i may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.
-Joseph Epstein
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While Reading Writers Of Great Formulatory Power

Joseph Epstein
While reading writers of great formulatory power — henry james, santayana, proust — i find i can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. reading henry james, for example, i have muttered to myself, "c’mon, henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so i can get some reading done." i may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.
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Before one goes through the gate one may not be aware there is a gate one may think there is a gate to go through and look a long time for it without finding it one may find it and it may not open if it opens one may be through it as one goes through it one sees that the gate one went through was the self that went through it no one went through a gate there was no gate to go through no one ever found a gate no one ever realized there was never a gate
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The first sentence of the truth is always the hardest. each of us had a first sentence, and most of us found the strength to say it out loud to someone who deserved to hear it. what we hoped, and what we found, was that the second sentence of the truth is always easier than the first, and the third sentence is even easier than that. suddenly you are speaking the truth in paragraphs, in pages. the fear, the nervousness, is still there, but it is joined by a new confidence. all along, you've used the first sentence as a lock. but now you find that it's the key.
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It's kind of like sentencing. a lot of people say that we have a heavy sentence for this crime and a light sentence for another crime, and what we ought to do is reduce the heavy sentence so it's more in line with the other. wrong. in most cases we ought to increase the light sentence and make it compatible with the heavy sentence, and be serious about punishment because we are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country.
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Real writers-that is, capital w writers-rarely make much money. their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than writers. the letters i personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. i always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that i couldn't have written them myself.
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As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. when the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.
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Most people write the same sentence over and over again. the same number of words-say, 8-10, or 10-12. the same sentence structure. try to become stretchy-if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. if you're generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.
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