This is a collection of Miller's essays and theories on writing and being a writer. If anything, it's a musing on the metamorphosis of the human spirit when faced with the desire to create. Honest to god, I bought this book about five years ago and could not get through the first 30 pages. I was a garbage person at that time, and don't think I could have ever gotten through it had I not done the Artist's Way twice. I guess what I'm saying is I think you have to be ready for this book in order for it to take. That said, it's equal parts philosophy and instruction manual for how to surrender yourself to creative life or being obscene, things I am very, very well versed. I dunno if this can make anyone a better writer or really even teach them how to write. It can, however, instruct a nobody on the sacrifices and rituals necessary to evolve into a writer, god given talent or none.

This is a book to read, to re-read, to re-read again, if you are interested in writing. I have read this book almost every day, for nearly two months, one or two pages or a few paragraphs at a time. Now I will put it away on a shelf, knowing that I will come back to it.

masturbation and the letters ejaculated out to form words it took me years to finish this wank and it makes me never want to write anything close to autobiographic again. i remember nothing my eyes saw printed on the paper and im not sure thats a good thing as i might make the same mistakes all over again. i have learned nothing.

Essential for not only the writer and artist, but also the reader in all of us. In one section he refers to his own creative life as, "hurtling toward the stellar flux." Passages that are filled with a density of groundbreaking diction as well as a mystic quality that is quintessentially Henry Miller. If you like his work, want to live a creative life or breathe air and can read then read this book.

There’s no way to summarize the magnificent writings and incredible ideas in this book. Here are a few passages.

from “Why Don’t You Try to Write”

The little phrase — Why don’t you try to write? — involved me, as it had from the very beginning, in a hopeless bog of confusion. I wanted to enchant but not to enslave; I wanted a greater, richer life, but not at the expense of others; I wanted to free the imagination of all men at once because without the support of the whole world, without a world of imaginatively unified, the freedom of the imagination becomes a vice.

from “Reflections on Writing — the Wisdom of the Heart”

Knut Hamsun once said, in response to a questionnaire, that he wrote to kill time. I think that even if he were sincere in stating it thus he was deluding himself. Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he take the path in order eventually to become the path itself.

From “Work Schedule 1932 – 1933″

COMMANDMENTS

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly oln whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
Discard the Program when you feel like it — but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
9. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
10. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Compendiums of fragments of selected writings is not my favorite, and this one, Henry Miller on Writing wasn’t easy for me to plow through. His essays can be full of long extravagant stream of consciousness rambling in my view, but emerged within these are contained every so often gens of keen insight. I admittedly accomplished this by considerable skimming of a lot of florid repetitive text, but what I sifted out has real value. An extraordinary man and writer who is worth the wait.

Henry Miller on Writing - Henry Miller, Editado por Thomas H. Moore | Uma coletânea maravilhosa de textos de Henry Miller sobre sua jornada de escritor! | NITROLEITURAS #dicasparaescritores #dicas de escrita

Dicas para escritores de um dos mestres da literatura americana, Henry Miller, autor de Trópico de Câncer, Trópico de Capricórnio, Sexus, Plexus, Nexus entre muitos outros livros sensacionais.

Henry Miller on Writing - Henry Miller, Editado por Thomas H. Moore | 217 páginas | New Directions, 1964 | Lido de 22.04.19 a 24.04.19 | NITROLEITURAS #literário #dicasparaescritores #ensaio #autobiografia

SINOPSE

Algumas das páginas mais gratificantes dos livros de Henry Miller dizem respeito à sua autodidata como escritor. Ele conta, como poucos grandes escritores, como ele estabeleceu seus objetivos, como descobriu a excitação de usar palavras, como os livros que leu o influenciaram e como ele aprendeu a usar sua própria experiência.

RESENHA

Um livro para servir de inspiração e de guia para escritores, com passagens belíssimas e autobiográficas de Miller, pinceladas por Thomas Moore, seu editor de vários de seus livros clássicos, como Trópico de Câncer, Trópico de Capricórnio, Sexus, Plexus, etc.
Muitas pérolas espalhadas pelas páginas, parágrafos impressionantes e poderosos. Comparo esse livro com o “Livro do Desassossego” do Fernando Pessoa, você abre em qualquer parte e acha algo fascinante. Miller é um escritor bombástico, místico, espiritual, obsceno e completamente obcecado com a verdade da vida, com uma escrita que mexe com o leitor com uma visão da realidade devastadora e vibrante.
Para quem é escritor penso ser um livro essencial, pois mostrar a intimidade de um mestre da literatura.
Recomendadíssmo, só cuidado para não começar a sublinhar passagens pois, como foi no meu caso, você acabará riscando o livro inteiro!

CITAÇÕES
Algumas passagens do “Henry Miller on Writing” que me chamaram a atenção! :)

“Escrever, como a própria vida, é uma viagem de descoberta. A aventura é metafísica: é uma forma de abordar a vida indiretamente, de adquirir uma visão total e não parcial do universo. O escritor vive entre os mundos superior e inferior: ele toma o caminho para eventualmente se tornar esse caminho.

“Comecei em caos absoluto e escuridão, em um pântano ou pântano de idéias e emoções e experiências. Mesmo agora eu não me considero um escritor, no sentido comum da palavra. Eu sou um homem contando a história de sua vida, um processo que parece cada vez mais inesgotável à medida que prossigo. Como a evolução do mundo, é interminável. É uma virada do avesso, uma viagem através das dimensões X, com o resultado de que, em algum ponto do caminho, descobre-se que o que se tem para contar não é tão importante quanto o próprio relato. É essa qualidade de toda a arte que lhe confere um matiz metafísico, que a tira do tempo e do espaço e a centra ou integra a todo o processo cósmico. É sobre arte que é "terapêutica": significado, propósito, infinitude.”

“Desde o começo quase eu estava profundamente ciente de que não há meta. Eu nunca espero abraçar o todo, mas apenas entregar cada fragmento separado, cada trabalho, o sentimento do todo à medida que prossigo, porque estou cavando cada vez mais fundo na vida, cavando cada vez mais fundo no passado e no futuro. Com a infinita escavação, desenvolve-se uma certeza que é maior que a fé ou crença. Tornei-me cada vez mais indiferente ao meu destino, como escritor, e cada vez mais certo do meu destino como homem. ”

“Como todo homem, sou meu pior inimigo, mas, ao contrário da maioria dos homens, também sei que sou meu próprio salvador.”

Here is Henry Miller talking about writing as the art of growing a personality that in the end allows one to transcend art. Come for the uncensored honesty, stay for the visionary advice. One of the best books on why writing matters, how it recreates us, and what we can do to set our own stories free.

A real 'whale' of a tale.

I read 'Henry Miller on Writing' as a writer, also multi-lingual and cultural, also in self-determined exile from the States No-Longer-United. It is through the filters of several other languages and cultures, as Henry Miller, that I found my voice as a writer. Having escaped the tyrannical constraints of American society, puritanical in its Judeo-Christian ascendency – an assumed predominance that homogenizes and thus denies all the benefits of its original diversity – my voice, without the faintest apology, the scantest equivocation, the slightest supplication, again, as that of Henry Miller, courageously speaks aloud from its own heart.

Regarding profanity, obscenity, and all other liberties defying – in outrage – the painful imbecility, the sycophantic delusion, the moralistic repression of mass indoctrination and mass hysteria, again, like Henry Miller, my literary comrade-in-arms, I affirm, 'Rave on!'

A textbook narcissist. Miller seems to have built an entire career on talking about himself, and always in the most glowing terms. Even his flaws are poetic -- the stuff of Greek tragedy. I've stuck with him for this long mainly because he's admired by some of my favorite writers. This book was the last straw. Miller's "genius" just isn't very interesting.

weird early 20th century nonsense