Disregard what other people may think (but not what they may feel).
Lydia Davis
(from “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits”)
Tag: writing
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I don’t linger a lot in self-delusory exercises in control — don’t describe too much or even have to have an objective idea of what a scene is about. My only responsibility to an active imagination is to submit myself to a state of being where characters other than I move around and I try to serve that process. I just get to that — I don’t plan scenes. I don’t outline. I feel my way along because I have come to believe everything you believe about writing instead of writing is bullshit. It doesn’t apply. You can make an outline but an outline is not going to work because it doesn’t apply to what is actually written. I am content to work in uncertainty much more than I used to be — content to not know where I am going.
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For me, writing a book is not about knowing something and then conveying it. (…) It’s a struggle with something so difficult that it takes all of my resources, and some I didn’t previously know about. Mostly, I don’t know what it’s a struggle with – that’s what I’m trying to find out.
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I feel fraudulent giving advice. I’m a writer narrowly focused on the page in front of me and then the page after that. But maybe that is advice in itself: focus on the page in front of you. That’s what I see in a writer like Toni Morrison. A fierce, unyielding work ethic, focused on the page. She was on a mission from the beginning, to complete this cycle of books and set down her ideas, impressions, and memories, both personal and historical. You can’t distract her from this task. For me, a living example like that was always more useful than “advice”.