"Bold, Persistent Experimentation"

A Newsweek article, "America's New Shrink", on Obama said that his model is FDR (we all knew that), who based his New Deal on (here's the juicy item): faith in "bold, persistent experimentation."

I love the phrase: bold, persistent experimentation. And I too have faith in that method. It's so often the basis for revising a manuscript. I'll know from feedback that there's some problem I need to solve. But usually if a reader offers a prescription for solving the problem, it doesn't quite work. So I sit and experiment -- on and on -- and then try the results on that reader again. And if the problem isn't solved, then back to work on it again.

Sort of like Thomas Edison's famous approach to invention: keep changing the recipe, and if that doesn't work then change it again, thousands of times.

It's a pretty good strategy. And all three ideas in this mantra are crucial: bold, persistent, experimentation.





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The Indiscreet Novelist

Philip Roth's birthday was noted on Garrison Keillor's almanac, and included a choice bit of wisdom that should urge us all to boldness. Note that Roth is the novelist who reached his first fame with Portnoy's Complaint (1969), about a man obsessed with sex.

Roth is quoted as saying: "I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you -- it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists."



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