What is writing? It seems to exist in a liminal universe, where words slowly turn into worlds.
Category Archives: Quotes
Empowering the writing self
Writing itself, if not misunderstood and abused, becomes a way of empowering the writing self. It converts anger and disappointment into deliberate and durable aggression, the writer’s main source of energy. It converts sorrow and self-pity into empathy, the writer’s main means of relating to otherness. Similarly, his wounded innocence turns into irony, his silliness into wit, his guilt into judgment, his oddness into originality, his perverseness into his stinger.
Closer
I would not recommend writing a family memoir if you want to get closer to your family members.
Every Word I Write
And so this morning, I went for a ride, trying to find that freedom, trying to think of nothing, and I passed Barney, standing miserably at the end of his driveway, the best part of his life over, nothing but suffering and sadness ahead, the crows circling overhead waiting for him to die—and I thought of my mother. I thought of the way she used suffering as a form of control, of how guilty I feel even today for wanting nothing more than to simply express myself, of how much I have been made to worry, still, that every word I write and every thing I say will only cause her pain.
And I thought, Fuck you, Barney.
I pedaled away, my lungs filling with breath, the tires humming beneath me, and for the next two hours, thought of nothing.
Sense of Order
The sprawling mess of life is why we need stories, a fleeting sense of order so we return to life with the unproven but irresistible conviction our mistakes and emergencies matter, so life might make sense too.
Tell a Story
Every piece of writing should tell a story. This is as true for a report for my boss … as it is for an essay that I may be preparing for print, or a tale about Josie that I post here. Same thing for any kind of a presentation that I might do for a conference: What’s the plot? Who are the characters? Where’s the dynamic tension? How do I want the audience to feel when they’ve come to the end?
What you’re working on will take longer than you think it should
From a post titled “How NOT to get discouraged with writing projects”:
Assume that what you’re working on will take longer than you think it should. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop suggests that “the schedule for any project you undertake should probably be expanded by 50 percent over what you think is right.” By allowing yourself more time to work than you may need, you’ll reduce stress, enjoy the process more, and you won’t get overwhelmed by last minute details.
Essentially, this is saying if I think a project should take me a day, I should allot 1.5 days to work on it. To which, I laugh. If that were all, I’d be golden. In other words, I’m either grossly under-estimating project length, or I’m taking way too long to do stuff. Probably a bit of both. All I know is something’s gotta change!
Be in it for passion
If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you’ve got. Just don’t plan on using it as a shortcut to making a living.
The only people who should plan on making money from writing a book are people who made money on their last book. Everyone else should either be in it for passion, trust, referrals, speaking, consulting, change-making, tenure, connections or joy.
The deep river was running
There are a number of mysteries in [Penelope Fitzgerald’s] life, areas of silence and obscurity. One of these has to do with “lateness”. How much of a late starter, really, was she? She always said in interviews that she started writing her first novel (The Golden Child) to entertain her husband, Desmond Fitzgerald, when he was ill. But, like many of the things she told interviewers, there is something a little too simple about this. At least one story was published before that first novel, and her archive reveals how much was going on in her interior life before she started publishing.
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Fitzgerald’s years of teaching – it’s evident from her letters – were often hard grind, exhausting and frustrating, in that staffroom full of “exhaustion, worry and reproach”. There is a poignant note inside the back cover of her teaching notebook for 1969, a long time before she started to publish: “I’ve come to see art as the most important thing but not to regret I haven’t spent my life on it.” Yet the conversations she was having with writers in her teaching books show that she was always thinking about art and writing: they show how the deep river was running on powerfully, preparing itself to burst out.
Climbing into other lives in other worlds
I never had the goal of being rich, and I have never been super-ambitious. A newspaper’s big enough for me. As long as I was able to make a living from my writing, I was happy. My ambition was to have people consider my writing truly great. Look, I need to be writing because you can’t be more alive than when you’re climbing into other lives in other worlds, whether it’s the Galapagos Islands or the Arctic circle. I’ve felt rich from the beginning – from the day I split the $40,000 advance for my first book.
The Remainder Table 