Category: Thoughts on Writing

書法大師沈尹默(1883-1971)總是勸友人不要學他的字，”如果真要學，就找我的娘家去學”，沈的意思是，如果友人直接模仿他所景仰的書法家，他們得益將更多。沈的建議雖然有道理，但他一個學生卻認爲行不通： “老師，你的娘家家族可大呢，叫人一時如何學得了。”

At one point in her operatic career, Maria Callas became so portly that in a performance where she sang next to live elephants on stage - they were there as props - a critic joked he couldn’t distinguish her legs from those of the gigantic beasts’. Stung by these harsh words, Callas announced -  to… Continue reading Hitting the high notes

Among the things I revisit to maintain my sense of wonder is this one-minute video clip dating back to the1970s showing the choreographer Balanchine teaching the great dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov the role of The Prodigal Son: we see Balanchine demonstrating the steps in the last scene of the biblical tale, when Baryshnikov’s character, now broken… Continue reading Teach writing by dancing up a storm

It was the mother of a primary school classmate - a woman of uncommon good looks - who gave me my first inkling of the kind of power female beauty can command: every time she came to school; a sea of heads would turn towards her as she glided through the corridors as though on… Continue reading A beauty who aged like fine wine

The scene is to be filmed in a diner in Los Angeles, but the story is set in Manhattan. Solution? Place neon signs outside the eatery and drizzle down artificial rain, so that the illusion of being in the Big Apple is created by bright shop logos glimpsed through wet windows. This is the kind… Continue reading Setting the scene

“A rope is made up of a huge number of fibres, but not a single fibre goes through its entire length. It's the way the fibres overlap that creates the rope’s strength,” the 20th century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once reflected. Conclusions are usually so difficult to write that even producing one that’s half-decent can… Continue reading Writing conclusions that work

“A writer, like an acrobat, must occasionally try a stunt that is too much for him,’  The New Yorker editorial writer E. B. White once counseled.  I lack the nerve to knowingly throw myself at writing situations that are beyond my abilities, but still, often, I end up passively going along with White’s exhortation: I’ll… Continue reading Writer as acrobat