Inspiration
“How do I work? I grope.” ~Albert Einstein
In my experience as a writer, there is no truer job description than that offered by Thomas Mann: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Nine days out of ten, I flounder, despair, curse, and wish desperately that I felt called to another line of work. Whenever I am asked, “How do you write a novel?” I always answer without hesitation, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
For me, the process of writing – particularly the writing of novels – is a protracted exercise in reinventing the wheel, whistling in the dark, wrestling with my personal triumvirate of angels (Envy, Guilt, and Shame) and listening to a soundtrack of snarky, nay-saying voices playing on an endless loop.
Because of this, I am constantly on the lookout for words of wisdom, encouragement, solace, and commiseration; I’ll be sharing those sources of inspiration on this page.
“The central act of writing is listening…I must somehow, as a…busy-busy-bushy man so proud of my busyness, find time to listen so I will hear what I have to say. If I am able to be quiet within myself, something maybe appear on the page which may become writing and, when that happens, my job is to listen to the evolving writing. The piece of writing will, if I listen carefully, tell me how it needs to be written.” ~ Don Murray, from The Essential Don Murray (edited by Thomas Newkirk and Lisa C. Miller)
“The question is not who influences you, but which people give you courage.”
~ Hilary Mantel
“Read poetry every day of your life.”
~ Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing
“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”
~ Margaret Atwood
“So you see the imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering…the dreamy idleness that children have an idleness when you walk alone for a long, long time, or take a long, dreamy time at dressing, or lie in bed at night and thoughts come and go, or dig in a garden, or drive a car for many hours alone, or play the piano, or sew, or paint ALONE; or an idleness – and this is what I want you to do – where you sit with pencil and paper or before a typewriter quietly putting down what you happen to be thinking, that is creative idleness. With all my heart I tell you and reassure you: at such times you are being slowly filled and re-charged with warm imagination, with wonderful, living thoughts.” ~ Brenda Ueland, from If You Want to Write
“The great trumpeter Miles Davis said, ‘Man, you don’t play what you know, you play what you hear.’ …[He] knew that you don’t make music from ideas. Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.” ~ Robert Olen Butler, from From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction
“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver
