I reread Lamott’s classic on our recent trip. Expect to see more quotes in the weeks ahead!
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
In my view, as a writer, lawyer, and former bookseller, there are no bad books*. Every book serves a purpose and should spark a conversation. The American Library Association has designated September 18-24, 2022 as National Banned Books Week. Learn more about challenges to books and advocacy from the ALA.
“Schools provide safe spaces to talk about controversial issues, and literature presents characters portraying human experience in all its richness and contradictoriness. Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them.”
— novelist Julia Alvarez
* There are some badly written books, of course, but that’s a different thing altogether!
“They’re an idea of home, I think. Words are. It really is like opening a door, isn’t it, to open a book. If that’s not too sentimental to say. Books, words, stories are a kind of solace.”
― Martha Grimes, Cold Flat Junction (h/at Aunt Agatha’s Mysteries)
“….I think the imagination is the single most useful tool humankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination…
All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people…
“The minds of animals are a great, sacred, present mystery. I do think animals have languages, but they are entirely truthful languages. It seems that we are the only animals who can lie. We can think and say what is not so and never was so, or what has never been, yet might be. We can invent; we can suppose, we can imagine… “
~ Ursula. K. Le Guin (1929-2018) on imagination, from The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination
A story, a painting, a song — they all begin with questions. Each scene, each chapter asks questions, answers some, and asks new questions. It’s a crucial skill in our lives as creators as well.
“Once you have learned to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.”
— Professor and author Neil Postman, from Teaching as a Subversive Activity, cited by James Clear in his newsletter
Although we are mainly writers here, you know I think we can learn a lot from artists in other fields. The singer-songwriter Kate Bush is known for taking risks, for never producing the same album twice, and pushing herself with each recording.
When asked about her willingness to take risks in art: “This is what art is all about, isn’t it? It’s a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can’t escape in real life.”
When asked about how she’s changed as an artist, she said, “The making of an album leads inevitably to big discovery. And I think that discovery is used best when it’s used on the next album. It’s all a big learning process. Each album is like starting from scratch, but from a new plateau.”
– singer/songwriter Kate Bush (h/t Vaughn Roycroft, on Writer Unboxed)
(painting by Christine Vandeberg, acrylic on canvas; used with permission)
The historian David McCullough died this past week. He’s known for his presidential research and biographies, as well as other work. He saw history as the study of human life, including art, and I was particularly struck by this advice he gave:
“I paint all the time. I love it. And I highly recommend it for everyone. Get out there and paint. It’s good for the soul. But I also particularly stress to people who say they want to become writers, young people, take a course in drawing or painting because it helps you to learn to see, to look, and that’s what writing is often about.”
— historian David McCullough (1933-2022), in an interview with Jeffrey Brown of the PBS Newshour, aired Monday, Aug 8, as part of its coverage of his passing
(Photo by the author, of her own art supplies!)
“In The Emotional Craft of Fiction, I wrote, ‘How you feel in writing is how we will feel in reading.” To be vividly alive is to be open to everything: unrestrained, honest, brave, awake and aware.’
– Don Maass, literary agent and teacher, on Writer Unboxed. I highly recommend The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2016), and all Maass’s books on the craft of writing.
Catch me this weekend at the Bigfork Art Festival, on Electric Avenue in the Village!
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
(Writing Wednesday is on summer vacation. It will return this fall.)
“Suspense loves a weakness in a person. … Beyond the crisis of the story is the personal crisis of the characters.”
—novelist Simon Wood, in SinC seminar on creating suspense in fiction, 5/3/22
(Writing Wednesday is on vacation. It will return in the fall.)