creative-process

to be a poet meansto live with a permanent wound forever susceptibleto either the shade of the skyor someone's eyes.

It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world.

A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer's block.

She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before.

But the conquest of the physical world is not man__ only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing an

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams.

[When asked for her advice to aspiring writers] Run! Just kidding. Sort of. Really, I think the best advice I can give is to wait for the book that compels you to write it-- the one that you eat, sleep, and breathe. If you try to force yourself to create an epic story, you will feel the ensuing drudgery quite acutely-- and worse, your readers will feel it too. Conversely, if you wait for the book that won't leave you alone until you finish it, your readers will feel that energy and it will make it difficult for them to put the book down until they have finished it!

Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed __undamental_ by my betters. Defiance has made me stubborn__ossibly even arrogant__nough to shrug off rejection and all fears thereof, no matter how lacerating to the self-esteem these could be. It has given me the will to seek only to satisfy myself.

When someone asks me what a song is about, it__ like, I feel like I might ruin it if you ask me that. I feel like I did my best to explain the song in the song on its own terms as a song.

We love to learn because learning feels good. It both satisfies and stimulates curiosity. Reading a good book, having a meaningful conversation, listening to great music__ust doing these things make us happy. They have no extrinsic purpose. To give them one takes away from their joy.

You have enough to create what you want.

You kind of attribute this magic to music and as you meet the people you realize that they don__ contain the magic. They just channel it a little bit sometimes, but they never possess it. They never own it.

When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of m

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning -- it'll be

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final s

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this., New York Times, April 19, 1992]

When dreams come true creativity becomes art.