“You write in order to change the world,” James Baldwin once told The New York Times.He didn’t mean it metaphorically. He meant that writing, when done right, ceases to be decoration and becomes confrontation. It’s an act of clarity in a world built on pretense.We know Baldwin as a novelist and essayist. He was a literary truth-teller. Society squirmed because his writing exposed unflattering things. With a voice equal parts lyrical and lacerating, he tackled race, identity, sexuality, power, and love without blinking. If you’re a writer trying to cut through the noise, trying to say something real, then Baldwin is your guide.Here’s how to channel a bit of that Baldwin brilliance into your own work. Author James Baldwin and actor Marlon Brando at a Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.Via: Wikimedia CommonsA Writer Must Excavate the TruthFor many, writing is therapy. For Baldwin, it was excavation. He once said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” His job was to dig up the truths people buried, especially the ones America worked hardest to forget.He knew what it meant to live in a country that wanted to define him before he had the words to fight back. That tension of being vulnerable both inside and outside shaped his voice. Fuel Your Writing with EmotionBaldwin’s sentences carry a strange alchemy. They feel like an embrace and a slap at the same time. That’s not an accident. He wrote from...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Yesterday