David Shields
David Shields
David Shieldsis an American author of fiction and nonfiction...
teaching editing miracle
Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic-not the actual thing, but the imprint of it.
reality talking nonfiction
To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality.
long novel built
The novel is dead. Long live the antinovel, built from scraps.
sacrifice too-much plot
With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot.
narrative plot resolution
Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.
character self critique
I'm wonderfully self-lacerating, probably to my character's detriment. I'm terribly open to critique.
genre-is prison minimum
Genre is a minimum security prison,
narrative nonfiction labels
Nonfiction, qua label, is nothing more or less than a very flexible (easily breakable) frame that allows you to pull the thing away from narrative and toward contemplation, which is all I've ever wanted.
art reality poetry
The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".
people humanity planets
You're one of 6.5 billion people now on the planet, and 99.9 percent of your genes are the same as everyone else's.
real events culture
Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any,
everything-happens-for-a-reason stories want
Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.
art reality economic-models
Copies have been dethroned; the economic model built on them is collapsing. In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies are no longer the basis of wealth. Now relationships, links, connections, and sharing are. Value has shifted away from a copy toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer, and engage a work. Art is a conversation, not a patent office. The citation of sources belongs to the realms of journalism and scholarship, not art. Reality can’t be copyrighted.
affairs agencies challenges chinese expecting foreign large looking lots marketing national return run security support tremendous visitors volume
We're not expecting a large volume of Chinese visitors to (suddenly) run to Jamaica. So we're looking at the marketing in a structured, managed way. We know we need to look at the return on the investment. There are lots of challenges but there has been tremendous support from other agencies of government, from the foreign affairs and national security ministries. We have to be patient.