The Saturday Writing Quote — the pursuit of perfection

Posted on July 12, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“Works of art are not so much finished as abandoned. Perhaps poems can be perfect. A short-short story might even be perfectible, as effective and enjoyable for one reader as the next. But novels and other book-length narratives are great rambling things that always contain some flaws. For works of any length, there comes a point when your continued tinkering won’t improve the whole, but will just trade one set of problems for another.”

— Bruce Holland Rogers, Word Work 246 (2002) (Quoted in Bryan Garner’s blog on Modern American Usage)

The Saturday Writing Quote — creativity and anxiety

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“Creative acts begin with anxiety. Scared or uneasy? Build a fire, write a ghost story like The Shining, compose a song like Coltrane’s “Alabama,” cook a nine-course meal to show love. One difference between the artist or performer and a person who suffers from anxiety and is disabled by it is that the creative individual managers more routinely to use the worrying to inspire action.”
– Scott Haas, Back of the House: The Secret Life of a Restaurant (2013) A food writer and clinical psychologist looks inside the mind and kitchen of a top chef — Tony Maws of “Craigie on Main” in Boston.

The Saturday Writing Quote — Ursula LeGuin

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”

-Ursula K. Le Guin

The Saturday Writing Quote—Jung on creativity

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life.”

– Carl Jung, quoted in Marry Your Muse: Making A Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity, by Jan Phillips

The Saturday Writing Quote — to create

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“To create means to relate. The root meaning of the word art is ‘to fit together’ and we all do this every day. Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together, we are creating—whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.”

— Corita Kent, aka Sister Mary Corita Kent, Catholic nun, teacher & artist, who designed the 1985 Love stamp

The Saturday Writing Quote

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“When you dream, you dialogue with aspects of yourself that normally are not with you in the daytime and you discover you know a great deal more than you thought you did.”

– Toni Cade Bambera, American novelist (1939-95)

The Saturday Writing Quote — on beginnings

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

It’s long puzzled me why, no matter how many drafts I write of a novel or story, I always end up spilling more ink on the beginnings than any other section, even as I near the end of the writing process. American novelist and social activist Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1878-1959) may have identified the reason.

“All your first drafts will need revision, but the middle and end of them may not need a great deal. You had steam up when you wrote them; you were commencing to feel what you wanted to say. But watch your beginning. That was written when arm and brain were cold.”

Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Theme Writing (1935), in Bridges: Readings for Writers 235, 237 (Donna Gorrell ed., 1985). (Quote found by Bryan Garner, in his blog, Garner’s Modern American Usage.)

The Saturday Writing Quote: a painter’s view of creativity

Posted on May 3, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“Creativity is a difficult word because people think it has some magical quality–-I don’t see that at all. Creativity is really following some sort of idea to some sort of conclusion—even going down the wrong road, getting lost, and incorporating that experience into what you’re doing.

The misconception many people have about creativity is that it’s some sort of external thing—that you’re hit by a bolt of lightning or that you have a great insight. It’s really a rational thing. When you find your own unique approach to working through problems, creativity manifests itself in your work.

Creativity is also the reason I think we involved in mixed media. It’s not so much that we’re trying to be creative as that we’re trying to accomplish something, and in our quest, we look for ways to get there.”

—Skip Lawrence, American painter

The Saturday Writing Quote: “creative solitude”

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family as a withdrawal from them. It is. An artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the time of healing alone. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted…. We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone. . . . ”

—Julia Cameron, from The Artist’s Way (1992)

The Saturday Writing Quote: fueling the fire

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Leslie Budewitz

“But here’s a radical thought. What if all the mess – the children, spouses, emotional demands, the dogs, the volunteer work, school visits, journalism, book reviews, the things we do to make money and to keep life ticking over for other people – what if they’re the fuel that runs the fire? What if the distractions and chaos of every day life are what give our books a heart and a pulse and an understanding that life is conflicting and complex and frustrating and full of unexpected pleasures?”
– Meg Rosoff, on Writer Unboxed, 3/19/14

Leslie Budewitz

Mystery Author

Tag Archives: quotes about writing