Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.
From Dani Shapiro
My dad died when I was 23. His death was sudden and shocking - the result of a car crash - and I never got to say goodbye.
Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We mull and interpret. We store away clues, details that may be useful to us later.
Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.
The mind is a monkey, hopping around from thought to thought, image to image. Rarely do more than a few seconds go by in which the mind can remain single-pointed, empty.
I don't think it's possible to separate out the strands of a writer's history, circumstances, life events, and that writer's themes.
I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.
My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.
As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.
Sometimes when I'm at my desk, I'll realize that I have contorted myself completely, and I haven't moved for hours, and that my legs have fallen asleep. I am elsewhere, not in my body, not in the room, not in my house.
4 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives