Reading, writing
Feb. 21st, 2006 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xenithJust before heading out the door this morning, I remember the phone. It was sitting on the bed head, where I'd put it last night to recharge it. Beside it, under a couple of issues of ASIM, was the Right to Write so I grabbed that too.
Last time I read it, it ended up being thrown across the room. Literally? I can't remember. I felt like it. It was annoying.
Maybe because it didn't have anything to say that I wanted to hear. At the time, I was writing, I seem to recall it was November, so ~ 2000 a day. Struggling a little because I was trying to force the story in the wrong direction. But I didn't have any need to listen to a smart arsed woman sitting at an expensive, antique desk waffling on about the sunset.
Today though, it felt like the words were soaking into my brain, refreshing and revitalising (like the water from the sprinkler I just turned off was refreshing the garden (and me)).
Obviously what she has to say I am in need of.
For those that haven't read it, it's about writing for pleasure, writing because you want to, getting past the hang ups and excuses that we bring to the task, and becoming, instead, a creative person.
From the first three chapters:
"What if writing were approached like white-water rafting? Something to try just for the face of having tried it, for the spills and chills of having gone through the rapids of the creative process."
"When people undertake writing it is often not with the agenda of writing but with the agenda of "becoming a writer". We have an incredible amount of mystery, mystique, and pure bunk around exactly what the phrase means."
"For me, writing is more like a good pair of pajamas--comfortable. In our culture, writing is more often costumed up in a military outfit. We want our sentences to march in neat little rows, like well-behave boarding-school children."
"Most of us are really only willing to write well, and this is why the act of writing strains us. We are asking it to do two jobs at once: to communicate to people and to simultaneously impress them. Is it any wonder that our prose buckles under the strain of doing this double task?"
Last time I read it, it ended up being thrown across the room. Literally? I can't remember. I felt like it. It was annoying.
Maybe because it didn't have anything to say that I wanted to hear. At the time, I was writing, I seem to recall it was November, so ~ 2000 a day. Struggling a little because I was trying to force the story in the wrong direction. But I didn't have any need to listen to a smart arsed woman sitting at an expensive, antique desk waffling on about the sunset.
Today though, it felt like the words were soaking into my brain, refreshing and revitalising (like the water from the sprinkler I just turned off was refreshing the garden (and me)).
Obviously what she has to say I am in need of.
For those that haven't read it, it's about writing for pleasure, writing because you want to, getting past the hang ups and excuses that we bring to the task, and becoming, instead, a creative person.
From the first three chapters:
"What if writing were approached like white-water rafting? Something to try just for the face of having tried it, for the spills and chills of having gone through the rapids of the creative process."
"When people undertake writing it is often not with the agenda of writing but with the agenda of "becoming a writer". We have an incredible amount of mystery, mystique, and pure bunk around exactly what the phrase means."
"For me, writing is more like a good pair of pajamas--comfortable. In our culture, writing is more often costumed up in a military outfit. We want our sentences to march in neat little rows, like well-behave boarding-school children."
"Most of us are really only willing to write well, and this is why the act of writing strains us. We are asking it to do two jobs at once: to communicate to people and to simultaneously impress them. Is it any wonder that our prose buckles under the strain of doing this double task?"
