Cormac McCarthy on "Editing"

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Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 41

@WriteConscious 3 ай бұрын

🚀 I would love to help you understand McCarthy’s novels better in my Cormac McCarthy course & book club. On my Substack, you can access the Blood Meridian For Writers Course and McCarthy’s unreleased interview. Click here to join: writeconscious.substack.com 📖Explore over 200 of McCarthy’s favorite books in my free guide to his favorite books Access here: writeconscious.ck.page/e20249... 👕Want to REP some McCarthy streetwear? Go here! writeconscious.com 📚Want to WRITE better? Join my free writing school: www.skool.com/writeconscious 📕My Best Books of All-Time List: writeconscious.ck.page/355619... 🔥Want to READ my wife’s fire poetry? Go here: marigoldeclipse.substack.com 🤔My Favorite Cormac McCarthy Novel: amzn.to/3TVdzCQ Insta: instagram.com/writeconscious

@Theworldisatlarge 2 жыл бұрын

My love for Cormac is incidental at best. I stumbled on Child of God and tumbled down the rabbit hole. I don’t have any formal education, have no idea how to write short stories or essays. Discovering his work made me fall in love with the endless possibilities of writing and expression. I can honestly say that I’ve loved his work before it was cool.

@WriteConscious 2 жыл бұрын

Still not cool! Reading is dead unless something drastic changes.

@kurtfox4944 2 жыл бұрын

I would not compare a texting device writing with no punctuation on the same level as Cormac McCarthy. Where Cormac really shines is, as you said, on how eliminates the use of semicolons to not 'muddy' the work. But that is where the genius comes into play. You must first understand the rules of English to know how to overcome the issues and know when you can break them. For example, for me, more than semicolons it is apostrophes... I thought that he never uses them. It is especially apparent with 'don't,' or in Cormac's case 'dont'. But, when I was typing up some quotes from Stella Maris, I found that Cormac uses apostrophes all the time. He only uses them when there would be confusion. For example. If you would shorten "we would" to "we'd" but eliminate the apostrophe, you'd get "wed"...well, there would be confusion between we'd and wed, so Cormac uses the apostrophe. You have that problem with wont/won't but not with Cormac's 'dont' or 'havent'. No semicolons is fine because he understands the rules and knows how and when it is safe to break them. But, the understanding comes first. People ignoring punctuation in texting drives me nuts because it is confusing and they do not know how/when to break the rules. Most do not understand basic English.

@WriteConscious Жыл бұрын

Great comment. I've been reading books about McCarthy's editing process with his first four novels, and Albert Eskrine drilled McCarthy about punctuation and made him learn to be consistent. Glad that guy believed so much in him and helped McCarthy figure it out.

@mattheww797 Жыл бұрын

I don't use semicolons cause I would always get confused by the grammar rules of when to use one. But I think what's most important is clarity. Lord of the Rings has a lot of traditional grammar, using colons for fragments. But most people don't mind because the writing is very clear and straightforward. I would rather Mccarthy use quotation marks when there is a lot of dialogue though. It works for westerns where the characters don't talk as much. But in the Passenger it gets confusing for me.

@lottoguy6457 Жыл бұрын

Quotation marks in dialogue makes it easier to read. So I have zero idea why he didn’t do it.

@WriteConscious Жыл бұрын

Lol.

@colofthedead6101 5 ай бұрын

Agreed. Most of the time, you know who is speaking, but sometimes you have to reread a section. It's tedious and could have been avoided with quotation marks, the omission of which I don't feel adds anything. Similarly, his frequent omission of apostrophes irks me. However, I still love all of his books that I've read other than The Passenger.

@anotherbibliophilereads 2 жыл бұрын

When I was at University in the 80s I was a semicolon nutcase. A few professors called me to task, but for the most part the punctuation was allowed to slide; nowadays I only have to write an occasional email or comment and nobody truly cares one way or another. I kind of like it when an author pushes the norms of punctuation, creating long creatures of words that twist and snake in unexpected ways.

@WriteConscious 2 жыл бұрын

I agree. I feel like it's best who an authors goes one of two ways. Minimalism or extreme punctuation.

@BradGroux Жыл бұрын

RIP, king. We've lost one of the best.

@WriteConscious Жыл бұрын

@Neymarisco123 Жыл бұрын

"It's the greatest underdog story of all time" lol

@WriteConscious Жыл бұрын

🙃

@briankim7419 9 ай бұрын

How would you rate the Road out of 10?

@user-xd1xf9rp5p 8 ай бұрын

I don’t know how I feel about semicolons in terms of if they’re always bad. Personally, I don’t use them because I never had a sentence or passage that compels me to use one. HOWEVER, I’ve read a lot of Henry James. And although I dont think his style is amazing or a model, his style is good for what he does. His approach to story telling is to have a very in depth description of something and his method of keeping the reader engaged without getting lost is to break it up with semicolons. Because the semicolon says, this sentence needs an expansion of the previous description without slowing down. Where a colon is kinda like an equal sign in the sense that it will give a clarifying remark on the premise before it, or give a conclusive hit on the nail after all the previous tiny nail hitting. I can’t really think of anyone except Henry James who used the semicolon but I didn’t have a problem with him using it. So although Cormac is right that in general they aren’t needed, I believe there are instances where a professional can use them effectively and they help the reader absorb the massive amount of build up. But, if a reader believes semicolons are bad because someone said that and they don’t really understand why they’re bad then a reader might not read certain books or writers and to me that is a kind of passive aggressive censorship for stylistic purposes. ***Because in the end, you could write with no periods and just do line breaks and tell fantastic stories and then argue that periods are for stupid people.

@Madiela 2 жыл бұрын

may you please link that interview with Cormac McCarthy in the beginning

@WriteConscious 2 жыл бұрын

Search "Couldn't Care Less"Cormac McCarthy" on KZbin and you'll get it. It's an hour and 15 minutes long.

@Ernesto_the_Caffiend 2 жыл бұрын

Love your Cormac stuff bud, keep it up

@WriteConscious 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

@t0dd000 2 жыл бұрын

Kor-Mack? Is that the right way of saying his name? I always said Kor-Mick. Interesting.

@WriteConscious 2 жыл бұрын

Lmao. Honestly I say it both ways. Probably should figure that one out if I am going to be a Cormac McCarthy channel 😂

@t0dd000 2 жыл бұрын

@@WriteConscious Sounds like people say it both ways, but MACK seems to be the leading pronunciation.

@t0dd000 2 жыл бұрын

Semicolons. They are very useful at times. :) I'm a huge fan of McCarthy, but his hostility towards n't is bizarre. And his tendency to insert untranslated Spanish: annoying. Otherwise, I'm fine with his McCarthy-isms. Mostly. I say mostly because sometimes his dialogue leads to confusion. It requires a bit more mental work to keep track of who is talking and sometimes you get it wrong. I get that he has particular about this, but it's silly, really. That being said ... Still love his work.

@WriteConscious 2 жыл бұрын

I love; semicolons for their usefulness ;) For sure, sometimes if I slip into super casual reading with McCarthy I'll have no idea who is speaking and have to go back pages.

@BBULLSHlT Жыл бұрын

A dude in a terrible hoodie will not be the guy that talks shit about the greatest literary in 60 years

@WriteConscious Жыл бұрын

lol

@autofocus4556 2 жыл бұрын

em dashes are much more annoying than semicolons.

@WriteConscious 2 жыл бұрын

They actually have a purpose in poetry through. The break you take when you read them is unique. Semicolons are replacable. But, Cormac dropping them in an essay on the unconscious is a little too much. Almost never use them outside of poetry.