For this post, I have chosen inspirational quotes that stuck out to me regarding an author’s writing process. The three readings the quotes are from are Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product (Don Murray), Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr) , and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott). I have also created three of my own quotes which relate to my personal writing process. This blog post will be composed as a writers’ round table.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Drip. Drop. BOOM. Drip. BOOM. Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. I have been sitting through this dreary, dark Sunday trying incredibly hard to concentrate. It’s to the point where I’m focusing in on each drip drop. Counting the seconds between the booms. And contributing to the noise with a consistent smack of the backspace key. Hours go by and I have yet to written a complete paragraph. Burnt bean juice has raided my nostrils, and my ears throb from analyzing nearly every boring small talk convo in this place. I buried my head in my arms and proceeded to pretend I knew how to gather my thoughts. Just as I was finishing up my mental breakdown, I lifted my head only to see a beaming light from God bursting through each opening of the revolving door. The sun. The storm was over. I sat up straight and decided to get the heck out of that place. Still admiring the silence of the light, I see three sophisticated-looking adults follow eachother in and make their way over to the table besides me. Just like that, three shots of expresso make their way to the table as well. Wow. They must be legit, I thought to myself. They glance over at the reading on my table, The Daily Writing Routines of Great Writers (Maria Popova), and their faces light up like the beaming ray of sunshine that took me out of my funk. They introduce themselves to me and tell me how amazing it is to see someone else here that can contribute to their conversation. I let out a nervous laugh as I had no idea who they were. They told me who they were; Anne Lamott, Don Murray, and Mary Karr, and what exactly they were there to have a nice chat about. You know what it was? The Writing Process. Hallelujah!!! Anne, Don, and Mary asked me to start off by sharing a piece from Maria Popova’s reading that stuck out to me. I reply with, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper” (E.B. White). Anne nodded immediately agreeing with that statement. “You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.” (1) The same went for Don. He stated, “Writing is primarily not a matter of talent, of dedication, of vision, of vocabulary, of style, but simply a matter of sitting. The writer is a person who writes.” (2)“There is always magic in this for me, and wonder because I do not know what I am going to say until it is said. The writer within is always a stranger, with a grin, a top hat and long, quick fingers which produce what was not there before. I shall never know this magic man well, although he has been within me for sixty years. He entices me with his capacity to surprise.” (3) “Hmmm. Very motivational” I felt my eyebrow creeping up as I tried to think about his response in a deeper way. “What about you, Mary?” She cleared her throat. “I find generative me harder to get going. But through sheer hardheadedness, even I grant myself permission to run buck-wild down the page with sentences dumb as stumps and few glimpses of anything pretty. The idea is to get some scenes down. Let your mind roam down some alleys that may land in dead ends---that’s the nature of the process.” (4) “That’s how I like to think of it. Something I always tell myself is sometimes you know what you want to write, just now how to write it. Just write it. Then figure out how you want it to be written. Anne, What are your thoughts on drafts?” I was loving the intellectual conversation here. “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.” “Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go---but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.” (5) I was fascinated with that response. “I never thought about it like that. When I am trying to sit down and write, I like to take a shot of expresso, get comfortable, stare at the wall for a little while and just let my fingers go. What do you do if you get stuck?” Anne quickly replied with, “I would pick up my one-inch picture frame stare into it as if for the answer, and every time the answer would come: all I had to do was to write a really shitty first draft of, say, the opening paragraph. And no one was going to see it.” (6) Don chimed in, “Don’t look back. Yes, the draft needs fixing. But first it needs writing.” (7) I glanced over at Mary as she has been pretty quiet during this conversation. I asked her if she had any advice from her own writing process. She zoned back into reality. “In the beginning, when there are zero pages, you have to cheer yourself into cranking stuff out, even if it later lands on the cutting room floor. Each page takes you somewhere you need to travel before you can land in the next spot.” (8) “The point is to have more curiosity about possible forms the work could take than sense of self-protection for your ego.”(9) “You have no idea how helpful you guys have been. It has been fascinating listening to such intelligent writers come together and give their different approaches on writing processes. I have learned that if you try and force yourself to stay on track, you get stuck thinking about random things like the reason you’re not on track, which causes you to really lose track of what you were almost about to write.” I looked outside and let out a sigh of relief. Now it was really time to get out of there. “I’m going home to compose a nice shitty draft.” (1)- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott) (2)-Teach Writing as a Process not a Product (Don Murray) (3)-Teach Writing as a Process not a Product (Don Murray) (4)-Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr) (5)- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott) (6)-Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott) (7)-Teach Writing as a Process not a Product (Don Murray) (8)-Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr) (9)-Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr)
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For this post, I have chosen my favorite quotes about the author's writing processes from three separate readings. I have also provided three of my own quotes related to my personal writing process.
Below are the three readings I have read and annotated:
Source #1: Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product (Don Murray)
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