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I've always wrestled with the difference between plot and structure, and after re-reading a lot of writing books I realized I wasn't alone.

Jeff VanderMeer

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Jeff VanderMeer
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: July 7
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Bellefonte
Pennsylvania
Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer
Always
Difference
Wasn
Differences
Alone
Books
Wrestled
Reading
Plot
Book
Realized
Writing
Structure

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

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If I could play an instrument, it would probably be a cello or an electric guitar.
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If the reader enters a kind of immersive experience reading a book, then I have to enter a kind of immersive state to do my best work.
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I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.
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I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.
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But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?
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I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it
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A lot of the creature comforts and the things we take for granted, are not sustainable, especially at current population levels. And so, it's not just simply a matter of changing over to solar. It's a matter of changing our philosophies. Of learning to live, more or less, mid- or post-apocalyptic, whatever apocalyptic means.
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The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.
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I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
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It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?
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History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.
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My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books.
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Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, even nonsurrealists like Kafka and Nabokov - writers like these, who create paths between the firmly grounded and flights of fantasy, are my personal North Star.
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Film fixes a precise visual image in the viewer's head. In fiction, you just hope you're precise enough to convey the intended effect.
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My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.
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If I wasn't a writer, I don't know what I'd be. Probably a marine biologist or something.
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Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.
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Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.
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Silence creates it's own violence.
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My singing ability is zilch.
Jeff VanderMeer