
Stormy Petrel

Sometimes writers sit down and it's all pouring out of them. Each word - exactly the right one - is just sitting there, juicy and bursting with potential, easily within reach on a nearby branch. Every idea flows naturally from the last and in an order which provides a neat crystalline structure to the whole endeavour.
Ian Dunt • How to Write
Un jour, à l’époque du voyage de 1948 à Berlin, Beauvoir était assise, un stylo à la main, fixant sa feuille de papier. Alberto Giacometti s’adressa à elle : « Que vous avez l’air farouche ! » Elle répondit : « C’est que je voudrais écrire et je ne sais pas quoi. » Il eut cette sagacité que l’on a s’agissant du problème d’un autre : « Écrivez n’imp
... See moreAude de Saint-Loup • Au café existentialiste : La liberté l être & le cocktail à l abricot (French Edition)
A particularly elegant commentary on this instinct came from the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, who said that—when one is learning how to write poetry—one should not expect it to be immediately good. The aspiring poet is constantly lowering a bucket only halfway down a well, coming up time and again with nothing but empty air. The frustration is imm
... See moreElizabeth Gilbert • Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
The Writing Life - Annie Dillard
> One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal