writing-process

The act of writing is a contemplative vision quest, a somber expedition of discovery that requires the writer to subordinate their ego in order to travel in soulful solitude towards a desirable personal haven of rejuvenating enlightenment. Writing for personal growth entails unconditionally surrendering oneself to the struggle of tearing their sense of self apart. It demands the solemn willpower to dissect and analyze the fissures of a self-absorbent soul one layer at a time.

You story must be best told by you. Your experience is a sacred life.

So much of a novelist__ writing _ takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them.

In the space of solitude, a writer attempts to remember how they became whom they are but nobody__ memory is up to this demanding task. No matter how much a person harrows the fertile lanes of memory, some memories are lost by the passage of time, psychological defense mechanisms screen other memories from detection, the ephemeral character of other memories are invariably to elusive to arrest with reciprocal language.

I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.

Inspiration for my short stories grows from a psychic kernel, a vision of some sort or an eccentric, colorful dream.

Writing is daydreaming with ink.

Always being myself and my salve, which is life. I__ not lonely, if that__ what it seems like. Always writing things down.

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.

There is nothing more valuable in the writing process than a friend to hold you accountable to your own potential.

I wish my brain had an off switch. Maybe that way I could get some sleep.

We write to embrace the sacred thoughts.

WARNING: The production of spirit is a very delicate and dangerous procedure. It should be left to the professionals and under absolutely no circumstance be replicated.

In a suspended psychic state, writers cull words and symbols from the mystical world of memory, imagination, and intuition.

Whenever I feel sad, I just take out my phone and listen to her laughter recorded in my online messenger.

Write, what you feel about. Feel, what you have written about.

He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on; kept each of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the same class reading techniques. He showed how the aspect of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be improved with a technique called an outline. The authority of an argument could be jacked up with a technique called footnotes, which gives authoritative reference. Outlines and footnotes are standard things taught in all freshman composition classes, but now as devices for improving Quality they had a purpose. And if a student turned in a bunch of dumb references or a sloppy outline that showed he was just fulfilling an assignment by rote, he could be told that while his paper may have fulfilled the letter of the assignment it obviously didn__ fulfill the goal of Quality, and was therefore worthless.

Life is a book. There are many pages to be written.