#A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

[wordshaveteeth]

The stories we’re reading here are among the best their authors ever wrote. But these authors also wrote lesser ones, and it’s important to read those too, if only to remind ourselves that nobody hits it out of the park every time, and that a masterpiece might have three or four test runs behind it, in which the artist was working some things out.

- George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading and Life

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has. ” - Michelangelo

+

“Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully. If it’s denied an adequate instrument (and we’re all denied that, at birth, some more than others), out comes…poetry, i.e., truth forced out through a restricted opening. That’s all poetry is, really: something odd, coming out. Normal speech, overflowed. A failed attempt to do justice to the world. The poet proves that language is inadequate by throwing herself at the fence of language and being bound by it. Poetry is the resultant bulging of the fence.” ― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

[queenoftheferns]

I want to be a better writer so I started analyzing some books I like to see what makes them so good- taking a paragraph out of the book and studying the word choice and sentence structure- and you know what I found every. single. time?

it’s poetry. you can always tell that a good writer is very often a poet as well. the creative ways of describing things just out of reach? poetry. the way paragraphs flow better when each sentence has alternating amounts of syllables? that’s a poetry thing. George Saunders in his book “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain” said that (i’m paraphrasing here) language is limited and it’s like there’s this fence in between what we can describe with words and the deeper parts of the human experience that we don’t have the language for but long to express anyway. the writer throws themself against that fence, trying to break it, and fails. But that bulge in the fence that gives you just a taste of the other side? that’s what poetry is.

And, at its best I think fiction can be that as well. We tell stories and we slip in and out of that fence and wink and nudge our way to those wordless parts of humanity.

All this to say, I come from a family of poets and generally wasn’t interested in reading or writing it because it seemed to mystical and hard to understand. But now I’m realizing that to be a good creative writer I’m going to need to develop the tools of a poet as well, or at the very least read some poetry. And tbh i resent that

[maxjwritess]

max’s favorite books :D

i did the 2024 five star highlights but here are my favorite books in general / brief reasons why:

dracula - brahm stoker 🩸

been one of my fave books since high school. exactly the kind of prose i like to read, long, flowery, takes 7 pages to describe the way dust looks in the moonlight. yes yes yes. also classic vampire book of course, lots of wolves, lots of victorian sexy scenes and blood transfusions, a cowboy. what isn’t there to love?

a marvelous light - freya marske 🌟

literally the book that got me back into reading. i owe robin and edwin so much. a historical fantasy that checks all of my boxes and gave me a favorite character i will never forget… edwin courcey my beloved… just in general the characters in this book are so so strong. if you like romance with fantasy and mystery elements u neeed to read this book, and the second and the third books too.

(also the sex is good AND is plot relevant. one of the best books ive read that uses the sex scenes to actually elevate the stakes and answer questions. brilliant)

a swim in the pond in the rain - george saunders 💧

if you’re a writer, read this book. it quite literally changed the way i thought about story, character, stakes, and structure. i reference this book all the time. please read it if you’re a writer. or if your a reader. or if you’re just like alive. it’s so good

piranesi - susanna clarke 🐐

i already talked about this book in my other post but gaghh. it’s just so good. i think about it all the time. it really just throws you into the thick of things and then you’re buckled in for the ride. i have never fallen in love with a main character or a setting oh so fast. certainly read if you like academic fantasy. oh, and you better like footnotes

giovanni’s room - james baldwin 🚬

i also already talked about this book in my other post but again. graahahahahahfjfbf. one of the best books i’ve ever read. changed my life tbh. VERY IMPORTANT READ. gender and love, american puritanism and masculinity, european masculinity, a tragedy you know you can’t change by the third page… it’s brilliant (bcuz ofc it is. it’s baldwin)

i have more ofc i can keep going but i think this gives a good reading profile for me? from now on im gonna post about my currently reading and reviews for books that i finish, which will be much more indepth than these blurbs. i may go back and make individual review posts (containing spoilers) for the books listed above, but this is more like an intro to my bookshelf!

if u have similar tastes, maybe we can be mutuals? i’m still kinda new to this app (and in such new to making friends on this app) but i’d love to talk to anyone about books :,)

[loneberry]

George Saunders answers those who consider writing a pastime for bedridden babies. (From A Swim in a Pond in the Rain)

[romilly-jay]

COSY CATASTROPHE: Fixing the writing

My appreciation for the revision process has grown by witnessing the improvements that can be delivered by successive passes and also from my reading of craft texts. Advice from George Saunders stands out in particular. Saunders is a strong advocate for editing repeatedly at the level of the individual sentence.

In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021), Saunders describes how he will print out a short story, weigh every word, make multiple line adjustments, and then type up the changes, reprint the story, and go again.  Saunders claims that careful and repeated changes to a story’s sentences can result in the story becoming not merely more beautifully written, but also more ethical, more morally valuable and instructive. He proposes that this happens because a writer’s moral failings will also result in writing that contains technical flaws. By reverse-engineering – that is, by eliminating the technical faults – some of the moral inadequacy is softened or removed.

Saunders’ claim is that listening to the voice of the novel (a concept he acknowledges borrowing from Milan Kundera), the writer can end up producing something that is morally wiser, kinder, better than they themselves are as a person. Saunders uses the example of Tolstoy, a writer with an established reputation for showing compassion towards the weak on the page, but a real pain to live with, if his wife’s diaries are believed (and they should be, as a matter of principle, as we cultivate resisting patriarchy by believing a woman when she gives testimony to her domestic travails).

I think it’s important that the solution Saunders offers – this attentive, responsive revision focused at the level of the individual sentence and that repeats over and over, until intuition says that a better story has been achieved – can demonstrably improve the writing but does not necessarily change the writer.

(Maybe it does, but not inevitably…)  I realise that we live in a context where a person’s writing and their life tend to be judged together and I see how that is a useful corrective to the perception that there were no consequences at all if you were a certain kind of person.

Nonetheless, Saunders’ theory encourages me to aspire to writing that is able to rise above my personal failings – and within my personal moral choices, it also offers me a way to be able to consider my engagement with a piece of writing on its own terms and as a separate question from my stance in relation to the author.

I may of course still ultimately choose to engage with neither.

References

§ Saunders, G. (2021) A swim in the pond in the rain: in which four Russians give a masterclass on writing, reading and life. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

[youandthemountains]

me, a genius: hm I'm feeling kinda emo, I'll get offline and read this book about Russian lit I've been meaning to for ages

the book, unsurprisingly:

...ok.

[thekidyouforgot]

It's kind of crazy but, in my experience, that's the whole game: (1) becoming convinced that there is a voice inside you that really, really knows what it likes, and (2) getting better at hearing that voice and acting on its behalf.

George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

“It really is true: doing what you please (i.e., what pleases you), with energy, will lead you to everything—to your particular obsessions and the ways in which you’ll indulge them, to your particular challenges and the forms in which they’ll convert into beauty, to your particular obstructions and your highly individualized obstruction breakers. We can’t know what our writing problems will be until we write our way into them, and then we can only write our way out.” ― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading and Life

'dolman, american or european, c. 1880' in china through the looking glass: fashion, film, art - andrew bolton (2015)

[nochargebookbunch]

Musings: Why Bother

I’m always surprised when someone reads my reviews, even more when they are referenced. But it stings a little to discover my writing has been ignored or forgotten, when someone asks me if I’ve heard about a book, not knowing I wrote about it. Nevertheless, my own rereading of my reviews brings back not only the book but the feelings I was having while writing about it. The review reminds me of…

[wordshaveteeth]

That’s how characters get made: we export fragments of ourselves, then give those fragments pants and a hairstyle and a hometown and all of that.

- George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading and Life

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

this man!! keeps making Choices(tm)!!! sir why would you insist that LotR is simple and uninteresting and trite at a fucking FANTASY CONFERENCE?!!

[mossyshadows]

"Thursday" by George Saunders is really good! I liked that podcast version where he read it. He has an interesting voice and it lends well to his stories. My partner loves short stories and George Saunders is their favorite :)

Also his book "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" is really great!

THE favourite is always high praise :0 intrigued to read (or listen) to it <3 thank you for the rec, adding it to my tbr, looks interesting!

[monologuerhead]

The movie producer and all-around mensch Stuart Cornfeld once told me that in a good screenplay, every structural unit needs to do two things: (1) be entertaining in its own right and (2) advance the story in a non-trivial way.

We will henceforth refer to this as “the Cornfeld Principle.”

In a mediocre story, nothing much will happen inside the teahouse. The teahouse is there to allow the writer to supply local color, to tell us what such a place is like. Or something might happen in there, but it won’t mean much, Some plates will fall and get broken, a ray of sunlight will come randomly through the window to no purpose, just because rays of sunlight do that in the real world, a dog will run in and run out because the writer recently saw a real dog do that in a real teahouse. All of this may be “entertaining in its own right” (lively, funny, described in vivid language, etc.) but it is not “advancing the story in a non-trivial way.”

When a story is “advanced in a non-trivial way,” we get the local color and something else. The characters go into the scene in one state and leave in another. The story becomes a more particular version of itself; it refines the question it’s been asking all along.

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders

[valsedelesruines]

"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."

-A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders on Chekov

[romilly-jay]

Story: drafting and looping and looking for the heart

Past couple of years have been framed for me around a genre fiction MFA at City, University of London (now City St Georges, U of L).

I worked from a story-seed that I'd first developed for a chapter in an education studies crossover anthology (contributors were invited to write a speculative short story that in some way explored a possible future for education, to be accompanied by guide study questions).

That story was about a community that for Reasons possessed the biological - and trainable - ability to jump through time. I thought of it as analogous to the way that in principle human bodies can dive through space, with certain bodies being better pre-disposed and everyone, again, in principle, capable of improving with training.

Didn't have too much, initially, beyond the idea of the capability (and lots of questions about what challenges would come from living with an ability like that). Oh, and a central character, femme, in search of her lost brother, MIA after breaking protocols and jumping alone.

At the time, there wasn't much more to it beyond a desire to reverse the hero narrative. I tried to set up a situation where the cultural coding was that someone making a grand, individualistic gesture was a bit of a pr*ck because problems are best solved together.

To my delight (and surprise) the story found itself flourishing in a new - space! - context and with the time-jumpers juxtaposed against a colony of standard flavour humans (with the standard human tendencies including unwholesome desire for power-over-others).

Status: Book One exists as a complete draft, while the draft for Book Two around halfway there. I guess the overall status therefore is "pretty secure early draft" - can see what it's going to be but we might still be some distance from the finish.

Plan for 2025 is to share the draft text a bit at a time (weekends) and reflect on the qus & choices it's asking me to address (midweek).

I don't know how much I'll be bringing from George Saunders into this - probably not as much as I would like - but here's an extract from something I wrote earlier on his approach to redrafting.

This is my aspiration for the time I'm about to spend...

====================================

Ethics: a craft perspective   

Before I started working on my MFA Major Project, I assumed the ethical tone of a piece of writing would be addressed by revising details within the plot, so, the narrative components.

The author and creative writing (CW) lecturer George Saunders takes a different view. He believes that ethical improvements are woven through the central craft of CW.

Saunders is a strong advocate for focused editing at the level of the individual sentence. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021), he describes how he prints out a short story, weigh every word, makes multiple line adjustments, and then types up the changes, reprints the story, and repeats. Then repeats again.

I assumed that revisions at the level of the sentence were necessary to eliminate errors and to finesse vocabulary choices.

Saunders, however, makes a bigger claim:

I once heard the great Chicago writer Stuart Dybek say, ‘A story is always talking to you; you just have to learn to listen to it.’ … Essentially, the whole process is: intuition plus iteration… What’s interesting to me is that revising by this method – trying to make better sentences, per one’s taste, over and over – has unintended effects that we might characterize as moral-ethical (2021, pp. 111-112).

In other words, Saunders take the position that careful and repeated changes to a story’s sentences can result in the story becoming not merely more beautifully written, but also more ethical, more morally valuable and instructive.

Saunders proposes that this outcome is achieved because a writer’s moral failings will also result in writing that contains technical flaws. By reverse-engineering – that is, by eliminating the technical faults – some of the moral inadequacy is softened or removed:

I’d say there’s a general principle in here somewhere: that any story that suffers from what seems like a moral failing (that seems sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, pedantic, appropriative, derivative of another writer’s work, and so on) will be seen, with sufficient analytical snooping, to be suffering from a technical failing, and if that failing is addressed, it will (always) become a better story (Saunders, 2021, p.244).

By listening to the voice of the novel (a concept he acknowledges borrowing from Milan Kundera), Saunders says that the writer can end up producing something that is morally wiser, kinder, better than they themselves are as a person.

Saunders uses the example of Tolstoy, a writer with an established reputation for showing compassion towards the weak on the page, but a real pain to live with, if his wife’s diaries are believed (and they should be, as a matter of principle, as we cultivate resisting patriarchy by believing a woman when she gives testimony to her domestic travails):

Tolstoy was not, however, according to the diaries of his wife, Sonya, much of a moral-ethical giant around the house…Duly noted, Sonya: the guy sounds like a pain. Yet his writing is full of compassion… What do we make of this? Well, of course, the writer is not the person. The writer… makes a model of the world that may seem to advocate for certain virtues, virtues by which he may not be able to live (2021, pp. 217-218).

References:

Aamli, P. (2022) The Time Tumblers. In D. Conrad & S. Wiebe (Eds.), Educational fabulations: teaching and learning for a world yet to come (pp. 51-64). Palgrave Macmillan.

Saunders, G. (2021) A swim in the pond in the rain: in which four Russians give a masterclass on writing, reading and life. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.