Saturday, February 01, 2020

Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk

Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk is a memoir subtitled Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different. Palahniuk was a 1986 Journalism graduate from the University of Oregon and working full-time on the assembly line at Freightliner Trucks when his best known work, Fight Club, published in 1996.

Consider This is described within as a scrapbook of Palahniuk's writing life, including detail about his long-time writing workshop group and how the instructor Tom Spanbauer noted that "99% of what writing workshops do is give people permission to write." Spanbauer was also the source of the book's subtitle with his direction to "write about the moment after which everything is different."

Other advice from Consider This is to write in short, choppy sentences filled with active verbs. Palahniuk noted direction from a former mentor, Bob Maull, with "don't use a lot of commas. People hate sentences with lots of commas. Keep your sentences short. Readers like short sentences."

Also throughout the book were a series of illustrations and accompanying quotes:

"For a thing to endure, it must be made of either granite or words." - Robert Stone
"Action carries its own authority." - Thom Jones
"Language is not our first language." - Tom Spanbauer
"Readers love that shit." - Barry Hannah
"What dogs want is for no one to ever leave." - Amy Hempel
"No two people ever walk into the same room." - Katherine Dunn
"Great problems, not clever solutions make great fiction." - Ira Levin
"Never resolve a threat until you raise a larger one." - Ursula K. Guin
"You don't write to make friends." - Joy Williams
"If you can't be happy while washing dishes, you can't be happy." - Nora Ephron
"When you meet a reader, it's your turn to listen." - David Sedaris
"All workshops suck at some point." - Ken Kesey