Writing Letters single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Writing Letters
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'I am not a good correspondent. Whenever I do write a letter it inevitably begins with ‘Apologies for not having written earlier’. Emails are no different. Tom Keneally told me how early in his career he was much puzzled at Frank Hardy’s complaint that the hardest thing about being a writer was the correspondence. Later in his career Tom realized what Hardy meant. Writing is one thing; but all the literary-related-activities, as Frank Moorhouse used to term them, take far more time than the original writing. The endless correspondence with publishers, editors and agents, let alone with other writers, students writing dissertations on your work, and so on, becomes a massive business. Evelyn Waugh had a printed card he would send out saying something like ‘Mr Evelyn Waugh is travelling abroad and has left no forwarding address.’ He made an exception for rich Americans who might buy multiple copies of his books.'  (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Wild about Books : Essays on Books and Writing Michael Wilding , Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2019 17393108 2019 selected work essay

    'Wild About Books – essays on books and writing, about reading them and writing them, and publishing them and collecting them and preserving them in libraries. Essays about the shared experience of literature, the art and craft of writing, the pleasures of reading, the survival of five hundred years of print culture, together with reflections and suggestions on creative writing, on what to do, and how to do it, and on what I’ve done, and why I wrote this book and how I wrote that one, together with anecdotes from other writers’ experiences, from writers in person, and from the books they have written.'

    Source: Publisher's blurb.

    Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2019
    pg. 41-43
Last amended 23 May 2023 07:42:27
41-43 Writing Letterssmall AustLit logo
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