“All of us, always, when we’re young, have to hold something for those who are old, and we drop it and want to get away, and draw a ship in the sand to reach a new country, and we always forget the ballast—there is no ballast but the earth of the old country—”
—Maria Dermout, The Ten Thousand Things
There was a time when you could structure a novel like Dermout’s The Ten Thousand Things and get away with it, but unfortunately no longer. Now your plot must be one strong, continuous tendon of cause-&-effect. . .
Read the full essay on Pulp Rag.