writing


Random quote of the day:

“There is a shadow on the wall before me. It is my own; the hour is late. I write in a hotel room at midnight. Tomorrow the shadow on the wall will be that of another.

—Loren Eisely, The Night Country

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I once had a writing teacher tell me I was an incredible prose stylist—which was a pretty heady thing to hear from a teacher. But don’t worry, it didn’t go to my head. Truth be told, I didn’t like or respect him much—he was arrogant and needlessly and publicly cruel to a rather fragile young woman in the class whom I rather liked. So that mitigated my egoboo somewhat. I was considerably younger then and although I could write me some purdy sentences and liked writing them they weren’t getting me anywhere in particular. The striving for that literary style and for the approval it brought was choking off my own voice, my true writer self. At a certain point I moved away from the jewel-like sentences in favor of character and later plot.

Don’t get me wrong. The five-year old in me will always want approval, I’ve just had to learn to move beyond that, to do what I do even if nobody likes it. Otherwise, I choke myself into paralysis.

I am first and foremost a character-driven writer. Once an interesting character has their hooks in me, elaborate plots seem to spring fully blown from my head like tiny Athenas. I’m sometimes cursed by the weight of these plots and don’t necessarily always pull them off. In at least two novels I realized I had tried to write a duology or trilogy in one book. Neither of those has gone much of anywhere in quite some time. It’s exhausting even to think of breaking them up and doing massive rewrites.

Then came the years of caregiving and no writing at all and that was agonizing. It’s taken me a very long and arduous time to get back to anything like a regular writing practice—and I am still far from where I was. Part of me, especially when I read a work by an incredible prose stylist, wants to go back to writing jewel-like sentences. But the important part for me is to be true to my own voice and my characters and keep moving forward. I can throw in the pretty here and there, and I enjoy that, but the important thing is getting something on the page on a regular basis and worrying about the pretty and the atmosphere later. Call it what you will, but that’s a survival instinct for me, especially in these times of diminishing time. A person, a writer, can only be what they are and should be grateful to still be producing. I know I am.

Random quote of the day:

“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me—the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

—Anais Nin, diary, February 1954

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. Irony is always scratching your tired ass, whatever way you look at it, I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.”

—Jim Harrison, Conversations With Jim Harrison, ed. Robert DeMott

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.

―Walter Mosley, “On the novelist’s obligation to employ politics and poetry,” The Washington Post, November 20, 2005

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I’m creating an imaginary—it’s always imaginary—world in which I would like to live.”

—William S. Burroughs, The Paris Review, Fall 1965

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

―Nikki Giovanni, quoted in Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The biggest barrier to writing well and doing anything well is self-importance; it’s blinding. Self-importance blinds people to life.”

—Jim Harrison, interview, Grand Rapids Magazine, May 1998

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“I can’t get around this dilemma: I have a horror of troubles, but they whip me up, they make me talented. Peace and well-being, on the contrary, paralyze me. Either be a nobody, or everlastingly plagued.

—Jules Renard, The Journal of Jules Renard, 1889 (tr. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 Random quote of the day:

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between lightning-bug and lightning.”

—Mark Twain, “The Art of Authorship”

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Next Page »