Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
What could be more satisfying than reading an articulate writer’s view of the writing process? Take a gander at some quotes I gleaned from the most recent edition of The Authors Guild Bulletin. And pick the one that resonates the most with you.
Willa Cather
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
Roxana Robinson
Writing about the two worlds a writer lives in: “The other world you’re living in, the world of the book, is just as vivid [as the real world]. You’re living with people you’ve never seen, though you know them as well as you know everyone else in your life. But it’s not always easy to connect with them.
Sometimes it seems as though a translucent scrim separates you, and whenever you’re not writing, you’re worried that you won’t be able to get past the scrim.”
Harry Mark Petrakis, a 92-year-old author, describing what his writing day 
was like when he was younger:
After pulling down the blinds to block the view of the “real world,” he put in 10- to 12-hour days writing. “When I finally went to bed, curled beside my wife, sleep eluded me. My mind swirled with the faces and voices of my characters, with the skeletal structuring of still unwritten scenes. After I had fallen asleep, the characters in my book invaded my slumber, playing out scenes already written or still unwritten.
For those months that I wrote, the world of my book consumed my life. The hours I spent away from the work were fretful and restless, fragmented between fantasy and reality. I had become a man with a fever, fully functioning only when I was writing.”
Tom Wolfe
“There are two kinds of writer’s block. One is when you freeze up because you think you can’t do it. The other is when you think it’s not worth doing.”
Matt Bell
“Novels have two primary sources: writers’ life experiences or their art experiences…While it’s popular in publicity to focus on the life experience that informs a book, a writer’s art experiences are just as responsible for how a story emerges from the imagination and eventually appears on the page.
As Cormac McCarthy once said: ‘The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.'”
Patricia Cornwell, whose childhood was filled with destructive adults (abandonment, molestation, parent’s mental illness, abuse in foster care), on why she writes about psychopaths in her Kay Scarpetta crime novels:
“I’m supposed to be writing my memoirs, and I keep going, ‘I kind of already am. I do it in every book.’ That’s what artists do. We take things and filter it through us, and it comes out in a different form.”
Donald Barthelme
I will never write about the weather in any story.”
Marilynne Robinson
“I don’t write drafts. The first sentence in my novels is the first sentence in my notebook, and I write from beginning to end. I don’t revise. The scene is written in the order in which it comes to the page. In a way, it’s as if there are different voices in my mind. The illusion of hearing the language is always very strong with me.”
Dwight Garner
Good lines alone don’t make a book, especially a novel. But string enough of them together, and you’re well on your way.”
Laura Amy Schlitz
“I love making up characters. I could make up characters till the cows come home. Plot’s what’s hard. Very hard.”
Elizabeth Strout, best known for Olive Kitteridge. Olive is a character with the winsome personality of a snapping turtle:
I like to think I come to the page without judgments. I always have hope for my characters. I have to come with a purity of heart.”
Lorin Stein on young writers who have stepped away from tweets and posts to dig deep:
“By writing offline, literally and metaphorically, this new generation of writers gives us the intimacy, the assurance of their solitude. They let us read the word ‘I’ and feel that it’s not attached to a product. They let us read an essay or a stanza, and feel the silence around it–the actual, physical stillness of a body when it’s deep in thought. It can’t be faked, in life or on the page. We see the opposite all around us every day, but to me, that kind of writing matters now more than ever before–precisely because it’s becomes so hard to do.”
Tell us which quotes spoke the loudest to you. And tell us what inspiring quotes you have around your office to spur you on to your best work–whether they’re on Post-Its or plaques.
TWEETABLES
Writers reflect on the writing process–and inspire us. Click to tweet.
Feeling alone as you try to write something really good? Then read this. Click to tweet.
In wake on another “Oh crap he’s not breathing” episode last night, am bit too shaky to digest the quotes above. Will revisit. I sure they are very valuable. You always do such a good job Janet
* Favourite quote is my own – Tell your story like there is no tomorrow, because today may be all you have.
* Sorry for awkward words. Very tired.
Awfully good to find you here, Andrew.
*I agree with your quote. No matter how young, how healthy, or how fortunate our circumstances, none of us can be certain we’ll have more than this moment. We can be certain of our eternal fate, but not what we’ll be doing tomorrow.
Lucky to be living. Service dog CPR. They sleep with faces against mine to be able respond.
* Reminds of quote.
* Outside dog, book is man’s best friend. Too dark to read inside a dog.
* Twain, but Mark or Shania?
Hello Andrew, so happy to see your comment popping up first. An internal button instinctively goes on when I don’t see you in the first three comments. Praying for you.
I’m so glad for your service dog and so glad to hear from you today, Andrew!
Andrew, thank for allowing us to walk parts of your journey with you. I’m so glad to see you here today. And your quote is a great exhortation.
*Continuing to pray for you, friend.
I relate most to Harry Petrakis’s description of total immersion in the parallel world of my novels, where plots and characters spontaneously take shape as if I were chronicling the real life events of real live people struggling with decisions that determine their eternal fate.
*I especially relate to the following: “My mind swirled with the faces and voices of my characters, with the skeletal structuring of still unwritten scenes. After I had fallen asleep, the characters in my book invaded my slumber, playing out scenes already written or still unwritten.”
* I’ve awakened more than once the next morning knowing exactly how to write the next scene.
His quotes are certainly among my favorites as well. He succinctly put into words what writers feel but don’t always know how to express.
Quote that resonated most: Willa Carter, “There are only two or three human stories…” I’ve realized this so often that I do not take count of it again.
Favorite quote, “you learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.” – Stephen King.
Sometimes writers try to make choosing a story complicated when, inherently, there’s not a lot to choose from. It’s the frame we hang that story selection that makes it distinct.
Love your King quote!
Matt Bell’s comment about the writer’s art experiences jumped out at me. I am very visual. I use words as a paintbrush to show the world the picture in my head.
* The quote on my computer: “I am a tiny pencil in the hand of a writing God” (Mother Teresa). That’s my living-the-Christian-life quote, stuck next to my healthcare quote, “We are hitting the target and missing the point.” Your post, Janet, and the comments here hit both target and point. Thank you.
I so appreciated Matt Bell’s quote. We can only over output from our input. And the writer who doesn’t open his or her eyes to see things afresh, has little to offer the reader.
Those quotes on your computer are both great reminders of “the point” of it all.
Janet, what do you think about writing scenes involving weather? I’m trying to decipher the meaning behind Donald Barthelme’s quote. I get we don’t want to bore readers with the weather, but I also think weather can impact mood. There can also be elements of danger in the weather, too.
Carol, as a Brit, I agree wholeheartedly about including weather 🙂 . Sometimes, weather can be a character itself. It can provide a juxtaposition to the emotions of a scene: warm sunny blue sky with birds singing as a significant character dies. Or it can enhance the emotion. Thundering, pouring rain, soaking our MC as they sit cradling their dying love.
Sorry, both those scenes are a bit dark, but that’s when I think it is most powerful.
Do you think it has something to do with this quote: If you can’t say something nice, talk about the weather? I remember hearing the mother on Little Women say that to Amy. Maybe Donald has nice things to say, and … no small talk. I don’t know … 🙂
Maybe he’s only lived where rain comes in gentle drizzles, you never get trapped in your house for three days by a blizzard, and the southwest corner of your basement is for storage instead of waiting out tornado warnings. As one who’s worn a clear garbage bag through a deluge to wade barefoot to a car in the middle of the new lake that used to be the parking lot, I know firsthand how weather can be like an extra character in defining what can happen in a scene. You don’t want to use it deus ex machina, but it can be a powerful plot device if properly used.
Agree. Consider typhoon in Caine Mutiny. Its almost a living thing, and character crucible.
Jackie, weather happens in real life and sometimes it’s necessary in a story. A key element in my YA involves the Mississippi River leaving her boundaries in Illinois due to major weather issues several states away and the added complication of excess local rain. As a former Southern Illinois girl I can attest that weather is the stuff of real life and it can definitely impact the mood of your story… even if it’s just a gentle rain hiding your tears.
I appreciate everyone’s response to the weather quote. And I agree weather can be an important character or impetus for action or mood creator. But often writers fall back on writing about the weather rather than moving a scene forward. Barthelme apparently suffered from that malady and therefore was sensitive to others who wrongly used weather in their writing. It’s instructive to think about how you employ weather in your writing.
“won’t be able to get past the scrim.”
It often seems to me like “Well, all that past good writing was a fluke. Today I will discover (or the world will discover) that I really have been faking this all along. I have no story in me and no talent to put it on paper.”
I think it was Rachelle who earlier wrote about the “imposter syndrome.” I think I have it.
Sheila, if you’ve written well before, then you’ve proven you’re a good writer. Not a fluke and not an imposter. Ebbs and surges in output don’t change that. One of my favorite quotes: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s safe to bet it’s a duck.” So from one duck to another, I’m glad you’re swimming in the writers’ pond.
Thanks for the encouraging words, Carol. I think the thing I miss most in the writing life is the feedback. I like verification that I am doing something right. I used to frequently enter Flash Fiction at a well-known site, and I liked the validation of nearly always being at least a finalist, but I had to step away from that. I miss that confirmation that I am at least doing something right!
I loved the analogy of the scrim between the writer and the world she’s trying to enter (of her own creation but so very real to her). I think writers are inherently insecure; it seems to be part of the package for most of us.
The one I most identify with at the moment is Harry Petrakis’ comment about not fully functioning outside of the writing. I feel at the moment that the rest of life is something to get through before I can get back to my story.
That might just reflect that I have been writing this for about 5 years and I am, oh, so close to the finishing line (round 2!), I can taste it!
That drive to get back to the story, to re-enter that world, is what enables writers to keep going–and to reach the end of round 2! Congratulations on being so close.
Think it is too easy to make weather deus ex machina.
* Example – rain moving scene indoors. Yes, does that in reallife, but in work of fiction it is banal motivator. Need a more compelling, plot-integral reason.
* There no coincidences in fiction.
Andrew, definitely weather has been misused in the hands of many a writer.
Disagree with Catheter. Stories have similarity, not ‘same basic’. I share 97 per cent of DNA with gorilla, but am not one. Wife may disagree.
Cather not Catheter. Freud slip, sorry.
That’s funny!
Grinning, Andrew. The gorilla comment. Your words made me think about how there may only be a few story lines, but I love how each writer brings their own colors to create unique stories within those story lines.
Amen to the color comment, Jeanne.
And Andrew, that was a funny Freudian slip. You’re caught up in the medical world, all right.
*I identify most with Marilynne Robinson, although with my current WIP the ending came to me first. I actually wrote the last few chapters before starting on the beginning.
*My personal motto is this: Write what you love and love what you write, because even if it doesn’t get published you’ve still got something great to read.
Lara, I agree wholeheartedly with your motto. I don’t have a fixed work spot (my laptop wanders around the house with me), but if I did, I’d post it. I love to spend time with my characters by reading a section I wrote a while ago. It’s a lot like visiting with old friends.
*I’m not like Marilynne Robinson, though, because I tune and fine-tune everything multiple times. No matter how many times I’ve read a section, I might discover that I want to adjust a word or phrase in light of what I wrote after I wrote that section. For me, part of the joy of writing is the fiddling with it afterwards to get it just right.
I love fiddling, Carol. 🙂
Piano is my favorite instrument, although I would like to learn the violin. (Couldn’t resist – humor based on too literal use of words is an abiding temptation for me.)
*Kindred spirits in yet another thing! I have got to meet you in person sometime, girl.
I was stunned at how clean (and beautifully) Marilynne Robinson writes. How fortunate for you that you can say the same. It saves so much agony–or ecstasy, if you enjoy it like Carol Ashby does.
Patricia Cornwall’s quote resonated with me this morning. As I think about the lessons I’ve walked through and internalized, the lies I’ve believed, and worked through, I’m seeing some of these come out in the lives of my characters . . . in who they are and in some of the truths they learn. This part of her quote spoke to me most: “We take things and filter it through us, and it comes out in a different form.”
*All of these quotes share some great aspects of writing. Thank you for sharing them, Janet.
Jeanne, it’s so true that the writing IS the writer; we just don’t know how the experiences shaped the writing unless the writer tells us.
I think the one writing advice that was given to me early on this journey was that God gave me this story, and I am the only one who could write my story.
*No one else will write it the way I do.
That’s wonderful advice, Jeanne.
One night saw a story, running desperate along winter road.
* Take up story was a choice. No one else to do it, or to let it go and fade away for ever.
* But story had a name and heart, and PITunia JezeBULL sleeps every night at foot of my bed safe from all winters.
* The story was up to me.
* She likes Fosters. Australian for beer, mate. (Just a literal drop, no worries.)
My dog, Murphy, will happily slurp beer. We’ve always limited the quantity, but maybe he’s go for a pint…
Janet, you should view PITunia JezeBULL’s expression when Barbara has beer. She makes eye contact, then looks to can, with winsome doggie-smile.
Please don’t ever give dogs coffee. We let our dalmatian lick a few drops off our fingers every morning and, over time, that destroyed her liver. Chocolate and tree nuts can do that, too. (Sorry to be off topic.)
Definitely not. Had Malinois with hepatic encephalopathy (genetic). We take no risks.
From this list, I choose Cather. Not that I agree with her estimate of only two or three stories; I believe there are more. However, when I write I want my stories to be written/read/experienced “as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” A simple four-word line that has been tugging me along this year is, “Love heals old wounds.”
Davalynn, I loved that part of the quote as well.
What a beautiful thought. And so true- time heals nothing, only love heals, and yes, even old wounds. This made me cry; thank you for writing it Davalynn.
Thank you, Stacey.
“Love heals old wounds.” That is so true and a superb overarching theme, Davalynn. That’s one worth posting if I had a spot I posted.
When wife married me she said of affect on her ex
*Tru love wounds old heels.
Feel free, Carol. His truths are so beautifully simple.
Beautifully expressed. Love is freeing and has the capacity for new/renewing life in its core center. Thanks for reminding us.
It’s that renewing part that makes us want to read those “same ol'” stories over and over again, don’t you think, Norma? It’s hope peeking through.
And Andrew – love your wife’s sense of humor. Her words could be transferred to my dog, a Queensland heeler. Or healer, depending on my day.
Davalynn, was a Heeler that saved life less than 36 hrs ago. Had a narrative ghosted; pls drop by my blog? Heeler’s pic is there too.
http://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2016/04/your-dying-spouse-146-another-near.html
Dear Janet, thank you, thank you for these inspiring quotes—I love them.
Two of them grabbed my attention: First, Patricia Cornwell’s did because my past is ripe for printing on pages of fiction and nonfiction due to a crazy crop of memories in my root-cellar-of-a-mind.
The second and equally important quote is Lorin Stein’s because you can’t write poignantly when Facebook notifications etc. are interrupting and diluting the wine of pathos and passion. Making my writing cave an unplugged zone is the wisest thing I’ve done regarding my work space.
My favorite writing quote is from a Writer’s Digest magazine interview with Stephen King’s son that goes something like this: “Just finish the book.”
Blessings ~ Wendy Mac
Wendy, I’m loving a couple of phrases from your comment: “root-cellar-of-a-mind” and “diluting the wine of pathos and passion.” I’ve been in dank root cellars, with their own particular aroma…And the quote from Stephen King’s son goes to the heart of the whole dang process.
“The winsome personality of a snapping turtle.” I love it!
Kristen, if you read the book, you know it’s true.
I like Petrakis’ quote and the ideas behind it.
I float off to the Southwest whenever I write. I love it there. And as flaky as it sounds, I love the people I’ve created who live there.
I’d struggle to write about the Prairies in the winter of 1975.
Bleck. I endure the real winters, why spend my imaginary time there???
Jennifer, I was struck by how he shut out the real world by lowering his blinds, which kept him in the world he was creating in his writing.
My view is our back yard, and a small forest.
And thick, sun blocking curtains because wow, it’s bright. But I couldn’t truly block out everything. Somebody has to tell the dog where the squirrels are.
Dogs seem to be a theme in several comments today, don’t they?
Good theme.