Writing Salon Mistress Muses

A Creative Life

"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." —Joseph Chilton Pearce

Re: Self-Doubt

"There is in you what is beyond you." — Paul Valery

Music

"Writing more and more to the sound of music, writing more and more like music. Sitting in my studio tonight, playing record after record, writing, music is a stimulant of the highest order, far more potent than wine." —Anais Nin

This week's favorite CD (not just the melodies but also the lyrics): The soundtrack from the movie Magnolia (the one with Tom Cruise, not to be confused with Steel Magnolias). I've had it for years and still love it.

Writing Down the Good Stuff

Preparing to teach my "Show, Don't Tell" workshop, I came across an essay I copied long ago from Poets & Writers magazine. Written by novelist David Long, it's called Stuff - The Power of the Tangible. A good piece on how important it is for writers not to become "bogged down in abstraction." I especially liked this excerpt (from the section "Kinds of Stuff"):

2. Special Things: I think of the monolith in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," its looming physical presence profoundly black, other. Think of Yorick's skull in Hamlet's naked hand. The Bobby Thomson home run ball that reappears throughout Don DeLillo's Underworld. It's Excalibur. It's splinters of the true Cross, the bones of the saints. It's talisman, totem, amulet. It's the lost map, the ribbon-tied sheaf of letters, the dead father's suit hanging mutely in the closet. It's the button accordion passing from hand to hand in Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes; the blue-green suburban pools John Cheever's swimmer traverses in his quest for home, the pinewood casket the Bundrens try with heroic ineptitude to haul across a flood-swollen river in As I Lay Dying. It's the birthday cake of a young boy struck by a car in Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing."

Remember a work of fiction and certain objects seem embedded in it. . . .

Wooing the World of Creation

Poking around in my bookshelves the other day, I came across one of my books about writing that I hadn't opened in a while: The Writer's Mentor - A Guide to Putting Passion on Paper, by Cathleen Rountree. I opened it up to a page toward the end, and instantly saw a Henry James quote:

"To live in the world of creation – to get into it and stay in it – to frequent it and haunt it – to think intensely and fruitfully – to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation – this is the only thing."

Good old Henry J.

Foolish Like a Trout

". . . Depend on rhythm, tonality, and the music of language to hold things together. It is impossible to write meaningless sequences. In a sense the next thing always belongs. In the world of imagination, all things belong. If you take that on faith, you may be foolish, but foolish like a trout.

"Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand. When you are writing, glance over your shoulder, and you'll find there is no reader. Just you and the page. Feel lonely? Good. Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communications. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

"To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance—not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write. By arrogance I mean that when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, good sense, or narrative development, but because you put it there. You, the same person who said that, also said this. The adhesive force is your way of writing, not sensible connection."

        —Richard Hugo (The Triggering Town, Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing)

And the Point Is. . . ?

I just took my afternoon vitamin B pill, and it gave me enough extra energy to scrounge around for a decent quote for writers. I found this one:

"Each of us is like a desert, and a literary work is like a cry from the desert, or like a pigeon let loose with a message in its claws, or like a bottle thrown into the sea. The point is: to be heard— even if by one single person." —Francois Mauriac

I wonder what Francois would have thought about blogging. . . .

More Dear Natalie

"You have to earn the right to make an abstract statement. You earn this right by using the concrete bricks of detail. After much original detail, you can take a little leap, step away, and make a statement: "Ah, yes, life is good," or "Life sucks." But you can't say "Life sucks" until you have given us a picture of it: a man lying in a gutter, mosquitoes feeding at this open sores, the tongue of his right shoe hanging out, his pockets turned inside out, his eyes stunned closes, and his skin a pale yellow." — Natalie Goldberg

Push Yourself

"Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out." — Natalie Goldberg

A Good Day of Writing

A woman was having tea with Mrs. (Thomas) Hardy, and inquired, "Did Mr. Hardy have a good day of writing?" Mrs. Hardy replied, "Oh, I'm sure of it. I could hear him sobbing all afternoon."