McDermott on the Flow of Words

The Baltimore Writers' Conference last weekend lived up to its promise as the premier writing conference of the Mid-Atlantic region. Craft lectures, panel discussions and one-on-one critiques on everything from fiction to screenwriting filled the event. Writers, agents and publishers attended.

I had the pleasure of meeting renowned novelist Alice McDermott for the second time this year; she delivered the keynote address.

McDermott asked us to consider the reader-writer relationship as that of a fisherman to a fish. "What are you fishing for," she asked. "What kind of bait are you using?" She painted the metaphor of a writer dangling a certain type of writing within a pool of potential readers. She had as much to say about the ideal reader as the ideal writer.

"The ideal reader enters a story unarmed and surrenders to the flow of words." She also warned that the flow of words -- like water -- can be disastrous.

Meet Alice McDermott at the B&N link below.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writer.asp?cid=881746