How and why do writers write, despite everything? Especially when you consider that a writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people, as Thomas Mann observed.
Alice Walker kept a sign over her office desk which would cause much fall-out later. It was to remind her about obstacles other writers had faced, and stared down: Woolf had madness, Eliot was ostracized, Austen had no privacy, the Brontes died young and dependent, Hurston had poor health. Walker had her daughter,"who is more delightful and less distracting than any of the calamities above." The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads, said William Styron. Colette told us to Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. Writing is a struggle against silence. ~Carlos Fuentes Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant; ~ Edna Ferber. Novelists... fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence. ~Fay Weldon. This one, about process, resonates with me-- Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.~ E.L. Doctorow
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AuthorCheryl Snell is an award-winning poet and novelist, author of the new family saga Bombay Trilogy, a retelling of her previous novels Shiva's Arms, Rescuing Ranu, and Kalpavriksha. Archives
October 2020
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