Posts Tagged Margaret Atwood
Writing — the pain, the pain.….
Posted by mirandainnes in Writing on August 31, 2009
Somewhere, in this clonking great barn of a house, is a huge box of books all about writing. One of these days I’ll find it.
I expect you’ve met procrastination — one good trick is to read books about writing as one’s courage ebbs.
All my life, I’ve been frightened at the moment I sit down to write. Marquez
It’s really scary just getting to the desk – we’re talking now five hours. My mouth gets dry, my heart beats fast. I react psychologically the way other people react when the plane loses an engine. Fran Lebowitz.
I suffer always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one. John Steinbeck.
Blank pages inspire me with terror. Margaret Atwood.
These quotations are taken from a book that was on the shelves at my last yoga week in the hills north of Rome– I had to copy the entire book overnight on my tiny little Asus which made me feel very like Shrek, with fingers like cricket bats.
The book is called ‘The Courage to Write’ by Ralph Keyes and I really recommend it. He deals with the whole prickly issue of why, knowing that writing is the best thing on earth — cosy insulation against loneliness, meanness, bureaucracy, tragedy; the path of discovery yielding unexpected treasures and horrors; gripping personal archaeology and effective exorcism of demons; a way to poke about in an absorbing hornet’s nest without being interrupted or told off — it is so damned difficult to get on with it.