Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly. There will be many mistakes, many things to take out and others that need to be added. You just arenât always going to make the right decision.
Related Quotes
One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.
I donât think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you wonât be good enough at it, and I donât think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect. You donât want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You canât fill up when youâre holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like waterâ just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.
Writers are like vacuum cleaners, sucking up all that we can see and hear and read and think and feel and articulate, and everything that everyone else within earshot can hear and see and think and feel. Weâre mimics, weâre parrotsâweâre writers. But knowing the source of all our stuff deprives it of its magic, because then the material feels mundane, clichĂ©d; you didnât have to discover it because it was already there for all to see. You may start to feel that you are trying to pass off a TV dinner as home cooking.
Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When youâre conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.
If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Donât worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If youâre a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary actâtruth is always subversive.