Written yesterday but I had posts on Only Me. Damn. Here it is anyway: I learned that Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest writers of our time. Hes been writing since the sixties. I dont know why it took me so long to figure out who he was. I think it was after the first time I watched The Road that I really started looking into his name on the web after realizing he also wrote the novel adapted movie No Country For Old Men. I Wikipedia-ed his name and read over his biography and some facts on him and his work. There has been over four films to date that have been adapted from not only his novels but his plays as well. I was astounded. To have that many directors and actors and producers bring into film McCarthys world of words. I had to know why though. So finally just recently I decided to buy two of his books earlier this month. Two of which were adapted. No Country For Old Men and The Road. I read No Country first within a weeks time. Which is amazing for me because I can barely finished a novel in a month. The Road took me about the same time. In general hours overall for both books it took me about ten hours. I couldnt put the books down. Even when I was busy drinking and doing absolutely nothing with my time I was wondering why I wasnt working towards finishing the novels. They were just that great. Enough so that Id stare at my delicious half-full glass of whiskey and cola and ice and second guess my entire nights decision like a good mother worrying about her children during a night out. During the entire time the books helped inspire me to write over 20, 000 words in an aspiring story Ive been writing myself. Im not the greatest writer. I do pride myself in knowing that I have excellent English skill knowledge and an above average vocabulary (in my region) but I do not consider myself a poet engineer of the almighty sentence. After each paragraph I rough my fingers and thoughts through I always second guess the nature of my story telling as it is. Am I telling too much as opposed to showing? Has my poor Buffalo Narrowanee linguistic nature bread itself in my sentence structure? Why havent I produced more words out of this particular part in the story? Will I even reach over 50, 000 words required to be a novel? Anxiety and uncertainty haunts me at every period. Then I thought about the way Cormac writes. You notice in each of his works that he never incorporates most familiar punctuation marks in a novel. Such as a quotation mark or semi colon. Often times I found him to use the word “and” far too much. Why did he do it? And then I thought of how many times I found myself stumbling over the books format flow. I didnt at all. Not once did I ever stop and have to re-read a sentence because he refused to use a semi colon or a quotation mark. It just all went together fluently. I thought maybe Id get confused with the distinguishing dialogue and story. Not once have I. I figured that if I were to be confused about it I wasnt really paying attention in the first place. All being said Cormac was obviously not nervous or afraid of the way he demonstrated his story telling. Why should I? His way of literature truly inspired me to peruse progress and as opposed to uncertainty. Ill never stop editing or re tracing my words however. Its never too dangerous to be too careful. Im just glad I did it. Im glad I bought those two novels. Im looking forward to reading all of his works. Im also very interested in reading Joseph Boyden novels. He is a Aboriginal Canadian author who, from what excerpts Ive read, has a similar style as McCarthy. At the end of the day its about the story. Its about conveying a character from the bowels of your brain and polishing them and treating them so that the reader will want to be apart of their nature. For me its mostly just about writing for the sake of it and practicing something Ive wanted to do since I was ten. Not since my J.R.R Tolkien days have I been this inspired and hopeful. Thank you, Mr. McCarthy.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 19:52:33 +0000