Saturday, November 08, 2003

Eureka!

imageI found it! There’s this quote I’ve been looking for, and apparently I was looking for it once before and I found it and I put it in my drafts folder of my email. Well, I was looking for something else and there it was.

And here it is:

A poet’?s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably…. For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.
Aristotle (Poetics)

Basically, it’s what I tell people who are writing autobiographies or historical novels. The fiction writer’s job is to correct history. To put things in the proper order and mode so that they make sense, so that perhaps we learn from them. I know somewhere along the way someone else said something to the effect of “A playwrights job is to correct history.” But I can’t find that so the venerable Aristotle will have to do.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:51 am     NaNoWriMo

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During November it's all about me writing a novel. Sometimes it's about whalewatching. You know, and then there's other stuff.