Gold in Them Notebooks, Part 5

The stack of notebooks I'm keeping near my desk this summer are from my MFA days, and I'm enjoying opening them at random and posting what I find.

From a question-and-answer session following a faculty presentation:

•Remember that form and genre is often determined not so much by the writer but
by how the writing is presented to us, how it's marketed to the reader.
•Characters are the symbols which move a story along.
•Commit to a length but leave space for doubt and for accidents (which aren't).
•Think of language as a character too.
•In some cases, theme, style, and structure can carry as much or even more than plot.
- Kazim Ali, poet, novelist and nonfiction writer

You can read the first four installments of the MFA notebooks posts here.