Sensitivity

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

To him... a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

- Pearl S. Buck

Quote

"I think lots of people tell me they want to write novels, but they don’t actually have the stubbornness, you know bloody-mindedness to actually make it happen. Sometimes it’s very difficult to be creative. I have days, weeks of really, really struggling and just sort of sitting in front of a computer, drinking far too much coffee, buying things on eBay, but it comes back in the end and if you keep pushing it I think it will come. And the more you practise the easier it gets. So I think there’s an idea about the creative process that it’s somehow freeform, whereas I think you only get that freedom by being very disciplined. So I work very hard. I have rules for myself - I make sure I’m at my desk at nine, I work through to lunch, I do my eight-hour day like I would if I was in an office. The truth is there’s no right or wrong way to do it, so you need to practice until you’ve found a voice or sound with which you’re totally confident."

- Patrick Neate

Make it work

"The secret to keeping your style story hop, hop, hopping along is to be forever expanding your cultural horizons. Since style is ineluctably related to the culture in which you live, the more you see, read, sniff, hear, or eat, the richer your engagement with the world around you becomes." - Tim Gunn

I completely agree with this statement, and it sums up my feelings about style perfectly. Also, Tim taught me a new word - 'ineluctably', a synonym of 'inevitably.' Thanks, Tim!

I found this quote through the lovely Flair to Remember.

Something to avoid

"What happens with writers is they start repeating themselves, and they have less experience, they stay home all the time. They just get bogged down in their private lives, and then if they travel they're usually going to literary festivals or giving readings or lectures or whatever at universities. That's not going to give you a very broad sample of human existence. They tend not to take risks. They don't get into trouble, they don't do dangerous things, they're not really open. They become settled. And it's normal, because writing is a particularly sedentary, weird occupation where you have to be alone most of the time, sitting." - Susan Sontag

Something I am coming to realise

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anais Nin

Rambling incoherently

I'm reading through some of my old, half-finished novels and thinking about Life and Art and other things that begin with Capital Letters. I am thinking about the book I am writing and the other book I am semi-writing and the books I never wrote and the ones I plan to write, and all those things are competing for space in my head and mean that I can't construct a coherent blog post (see?). So instead I give you some words from one of my favourite writers, Joss Whedon, written during the Writers' Strike in Hollywood ...

Except this is exactly the problem. The easiest tactic is for people to paint writers as namby pamby arty scarfy posers, because it’s what most people think even when we’re not striking. Writing is largely not considered work. Art in general is not considered work. Work is a thing you physically labor at, or at the very least, hate. Art is fun. (And Hollywood writers are overpaid, scarf-wearing dainties.) It’s an easy argument to make. And a hard one to dispute.

My son is almost five. He is just beginning to understand what I do as a concept. If I drove a construction crane he’d have understood it at birth. And he’d probably think I was King of all the Lands in my fine yellow crane. But writing – especially writing a movie or show, where people other than the writer are all saying things that they’re clearly (to an unschooled mind) making up right then – is something to get your head around.

And as work? Well, in the first place, it IS fun. When it’s going well, it’s the most fun I can imagine having. (Tim Minear might dispute that.) And when it’s not going well, it’s often not going well in the company of a bunch of funny, thoughtful people. So how is that work? You got no muscles to show for it (yes, the brain is a muscle, but if you show it to people it’s usually because part of your skull has been torn off and that doesn’t impress the ladies – unless the ladies are ZOMBIES! Where did this paragraph go?) Writing is enjoyable and ephemeral. And it’s hard work.

It’s always hard. Not just dealing with obtuse, intrusive studio execs, temperamental stars and family-prohibiting hours. Those are producer issues as much as anything else. Not just trying to get your first script sold, or seen, or finished, when nobody around believes you can/will/should… the ACT of writing is hard. When Buffy was flowing at its flowingest, David Greenwalt used to turn to me at some point during every torturous story-breaking session and say “Why is it still hard? When do we just get to be good at it?” I’ll only bore you with one theory: because every good story needs to be completely personal (so there are no guidelines) and completely universal (so it’s all been done). It’s just never simple.

It’s necessary, though. We’re talking about story-telling, the most basic human need. Food? That’s an animal need. Shelter? That’s a luxury item that leads to social grouping, which leads directly to fancy scarves. But human awareness is all about story-telling. The selective narrative of your memory. The story of why the Sky Bully throws lightning at you. From the first, stories, even unspoken, separated us from the other, cooler beasts. And now we’re talking about the stories that define our nation’s popular culture – a huge part of its identity. These are the people that think those up. Working writers. - Joss Whedon

We're a gloomy bunch

I'm doing a lot of reading tonight, as you can probably tell. I found an interesting article on the link between depression and people who make their living in the arts.

"The writer works alone and for long periods. Social isolation is linked to depression because social interaction provides various kinds of support that can inhibit depressive thoughts and tendencies. The writer doesn't get much exercise. Regular exercise mitigates against the development of depressive symptoms. The writer is poorly paid, and this might lead to poor diet (though I must say that, in my case, the reduction in shopping budget has led to healthier meals), which is linked to depression. Poor pay is also linked to lowered social status, another causal factor in depression. Finally, your success as a writer is almost completely attributable to other people - editors, publishers, readers - and when those people aren't helpful (i.e. you almost never find yourself in court defending a pointless action that will only drive up sales of your already monstrous book), this might lead to a sense of hopelessness, and a feeling that the fundamentals of life are not under your control.

A psychologist called Julian Rotter developed the idea of 'locus of control'. Essentially, it refers to the individual's conception of whether the important things in life (relationships, job, well-being, etc.) are determined by the individual - an internal locus of control - or determined by external forces - an external locus of control. This is probably gets to the nub of the matter. Artists are constantly exposed to approval from the word go, from photographers to painters to writers, and constantly at threat that the approval will be withdrawn (I would guess). Of course, artists are perhaps more sensitive than the general population, too." - Ian Hocking

Extract from an interview with Barbara Kingsolver

Writing is Kingsolver's passion, but she's no artiste. "I consider myself a writer of the working class. I'm a little bit smug about it. I have so little tolerance for writers who have elaborate three-hour rituals before they even get down to work. I think, oh, please. My idea of a pre-writing ritual is getting the kids on the bus and sitting down." The years she worked as a technical writer taught her "to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don't. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.

"I love revision. Revision is where the art really happens, when you begin to manipulate, shift things around so your theme begins to shine through."

The full interview is here.

Quote (I like this one a lot)

"I don't believe anyone should write unless they have a book to write. Otherwise they should just shut up." - Arundhati Roy

Quote

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Good advice!

From Neil Gaiman's blog:

"The second draft is where the fun is. In a first draft, you get to explode. The objective (at least for me) is to get it down on paper, somehow. Battle through the laziness and the not-enough-time and the this-is-rubbish and everything else, and just get it written. Whatever it takes. The second draft is where you go and gather together the fragments of the explosion and figure out what it is you did, and make it look like that was what you always meant to do.

So you write it. Then you put it aside. Not for months, but perhaps for a week or so. Even a few days. Do other things. Then set aside some uninterrupted time to read, and pull it out, and pretend you have never read it before -- clear it out of your head, and sit and read it. (I'd suggest you do this on a print-out, so you can scribble on it as you go. )

When you get to the end you should have a much better idea of what it was about than you did when you started. (I knew The Graveyard Book would be about a boy who lived in a graveyard when I started it. I didn't know that it would be about how we make our families, though: that's a theme that made itself apparent while the book was being written.)

And then, on the second and subsequent drafts, you do four things. 1) You fix the things that didn't work as best you can (if you don't like the climactic Rock City scene in American Gods, trust me, the first draft was so much worse). 2) You reinforce the themes, whether they were there from the beginning or whether they grew like Topsy on the way. You take out the stuff that undercuts those themes. 3) You worry about the title. 4) At some point in the revision process you will probably need to remind yourself that you could keep polishing it infinitely, that perfection is not an attribute of humankind, and really, shouldn't you get on with the next thing now?"

Cry the beloved country ...

This is the amount of Zimbabwe dollars this boy needs to buy a banana (photo from Sokwanele - Zvakwana).

This image of a man who was tied to a barn door and set alight by Mugabe's thugs was also taken by Sokwanele - Zvakwana ('Enough is Enough' in English). Go to Sokwanele's photostream and look at the photos of torture victims there - the result of Mugabe's reprisal attacks under the codename Operation Mavhoterapapi ('Where you put your "X"'). They're not pleasant to see, but the world needs to see them. Too much violence has been allowed to slip under the radar, and brave people like this need to be recognised for bringing it to the attention of the world.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” - Desmond Tutu

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” - Elie Wiesel

Some quotes I like at the moment

On writer's block:
"I don't believe in it. Plumbers don't get plumber's block and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expect sympathy for it?" - Philip Pullman

"I believe humans get a lot done, not because we're smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee." - Flash Rosenberg

"Every day is a gift, even if it sucks." - Sherry Hochman

Quote

"A writer is someone who finishes." - Thomas Farber

Quote

"Some people have a way with words, and others ... not have way." - Steve Martin

Quote

"The best thing is to write anything, anything at all that comes into your head until gradually there is a calm and creative day." - Stephen Spender

Another quote

I'm finding quotes very useful these days, as I wring words out of my brain like dirty water out of a cleaning rag. They put it better then I can at the moment. Here's one from Elie Wiesel ...
"Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale."

Another quote

"Creativity lies in the doing, not in the done." - Julia Cameron