He Wishes for the Cloths Of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
Wanting to be a writer and having F. Scott Fitzgerald as your dad must have been a tough row to hoe. But that’s exactly what happened to Scottie Fitzgerald. When she felt a bit discouraged about a story she’d penned in high school, her dad responded with a letter that gently reminded her of the challenging life of the writer:
Grove Park Inn
Asheville, N.C.
October 20, 1936
Dearest Scottina:
…Don’t be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.
Let me preach again for one moment: I mean that what you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought. It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn….
Nothing any good isn’t hard, and you know you have never been brought up soft, or are you quitting on me suddenly? Darling, you know I love you, and I expect you to live up absolutely to what I laid out for you in the beginning.
Scott
“Nothing any good isn’t hard” — words to ponder as we all write on!
“In our rush-rush world, if we allow ourselves to slow down our lives and
our writing process, we’ll discover that we’ll connect — or reconnect — with our most profound work.” Louise DeSalvo, The Art of Slow Writing
Slow cooking and slow writing: While the ingredients are different, the idea behind them is the same: to create something savory and soul-satisfying by taking the time, making the time, to let flavors or words ripen and reveal themselves. As Louise DeSalvo says so well in The Art of Slow Writing, the real goal is to “become our truest, deepest, most authentic writing selves.” This takes time, intention, invention, revision.
In her search for the wellsprings of creativity, Louise DeSalvo studied the early and later drafts of well-known authors, and read their journals, interviews, and letters. I find it inspiring to learn that Hemingway rewrote The Old Man and the Sea 19 times or that John Steinbeck spent many years gathering material and reflecting on it before he sat down and penned The Grape of Wrath.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in crafting my novel, it’s this: building a world takes time. With every revision, my characters have deepened and my story arc has strengthened. The gift of time is a gift I’m giving myself — and my story. We’ve earned it — together.
We all need courage and faith in ourselves to survive the stages our work goes through as we shape it and reshape it. And we all need the strength to find a new path when our original vision seems to melt away and we’re left with something altogether different.
Slow writing. Sl-o-o-w writing. I like the way this sounds. It reminds me that anything worth doing is worth doing well. And most of the time, this takes time. I remember reading about John Legend’s response when a studio executive worried that his album was taking too long to finish. Legend simply said, “You can’t rush creativity.” Write on!
Writers are word lovers and when we love them hard and long enough, they love us back. Writerly thoughts on word wooing to inspire us all:
“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it….Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” Ursula Le Guin
“Words set things in motion….Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing.” Toni Cade Bambara
“A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory…thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.” Rumer Godden
“Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose that the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.“ Barbara Tuchman
“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.” Hart Crane
“When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Savor them in your mouth, try them on your typewriter.” Ray Bradbury
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” William Wordsworth
Word lovers unite — and write on!
Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the plot for the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde during a dream.
Paul McCartney discovered his hit song “Yesterday” in a dream.
Mary Shelley’s dream at Lord Byron’s villa inspired Frankenstein.
Dreams have always been a powerful creative tool in artist’s arsenal. And studies confirming the importance of sleep show that our neurons fire almost as often when we’re sleeping as they do when we’re awake. A few findings about sleep and creativity:
There’s growing evidence that our minds tend to be most creative just as we are emerging from sleep: During the half-waking, half-dreaming state known as “sleep inertia,” our creativity seems to surge. This is why coming up with ideas and writing them down as soon as we wake is a proven technique for enhancing creativity that’s been used by everyone from writers and poets to Ben Franklin.
The theory behind this: When we’re in a post-sleep, dream-like mental state, we can bridge the gap between sleep and wakefulness, and bring insights and inspiration from our sleep state into our consciousness. Once we’re fully alert, our waking consciousness assumes total control, making plans and doing things — and we pass out of the more fluid, expansive state we enjoy when we’re just emerging from our rest.
Sleep can also be a powerful creativity booster because the mind, in an unconscious resting state, can forge surprising and innovative new connections that it might not make in a conscious, waking state. Studies show that sleep can foster “remote associates” or unusual connections in the brain. And these can lead to exciting “a-Ha” moments.
Why not test this all out and give your creativity a boost by having a paper and pen by your bedside, so you can jot down any hot ideas before they slip away? Write on!
“Freedom lies in being bold.”
Robert Frost
Writing dangerously is all about becoming bolder. Here’s how my handy Oxford Compact English Dictionary defines the word “bold:” 1) confident and courageous; 2) audacious, impudent; and 3) (of a colour or design) strong and vivid.
Confidence, courage, audacity, impudence, strength and vividness — can we bring these to our writing? Of course, we can! What practices can help engender these qualities? Some ideas from a fellow creative:
Put the work first: Make fueling and fulfilling your creativity a top priority. Whatever the demands on your time or challenges that life throws at you, figure out a way to keep you writing center stage — carve out the time and space to let the magic happen.
Spark creativity with play: Creating a playful writing mindset might mean using Julia Cameron’s idea of “Morning Pages,” to loosen up our brains, or reading poetry, or taking three words from the dictionary and weaving a story around them for 10 or 15 minutes. Or even using a coloring book to relax and stoke ourselves. Whatever works!
Focus solely on this one thing, no distractions: Once you are in work mode, stay in the zone. Save emails and social media for later.
Welcome accidents and discovery: Messy, unruly drafts can take us to exciting, unpredictable places. So go all out—don’t hold back! You can always fine-tune and revise.
Revise=re-envision: Let’s zealously push our writing to the next level, polishing and repolishing it until it shines.
Find models of excellence: Constantly look for inspiration from other creative souls.
Practices to ponder and apply as we all write on.
Peace
Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It will not ebb like the sea.
I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven high,
They are all fulfilled in you.
I am the pol of gold
When sunset burns and dies —
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold.
— Sara Teasdale
“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde is a favorite of mine and today. October 16, is his birthday. I love and admire his amazing range: He could go from 0 to 60 in a heartbeat, from the wicked humor of The Importance of Being Earnest to the heavenly wisdom of De Profundis. In his honor, I’m sharing a handful of his sparkling gems on writing to inspire us all:
“The play was a success, but the audience was a failure.”
“What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.”
“Experience in the name everyone gives their mistakes.”
“Moderation is a fatal thing; nothing succeeds like excess.”
“Constancy is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
“All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life
imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
“To live is the rarest thing of all. Most people exist, that is all.”
“The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because
he is absolutely himself.”
“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.”
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something
sensational to read on the train.”
“There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well
written or badly written.”
“Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find the way
by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the
rest of the world.”
“The Artist is the creator of beautiful things.”
What a way with words! Write on!
Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the plot for the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde during a dream.
Paul McCartney discovered the tune foe his hit song “Yesterday” in a dream.
Mary Shelley’s dream at Lord Byron’s villa inspired her gothic tale, Frankenstein.
Dreams have always been a powerful creative tool in artist’s arsenal. And studies confirming the importance of sleep to our long-term health continue to pour out: They’ve determined that our neurons fire almost as often when we’re sleeping as they do when we’re awake. But here are a few findings about sleep and creativity that may surprise and stimulate you:
There’s growing evidence that our minds tend to be most creative just as we are emerging from sleep: During the half-waking, half-dreaming state known as “sleep inertia,” our creativity seems to surge. This is why coming up with ideas and writing them down as soon as we wake is a proven technique for enhancing creativity that’s been used by everyone from writers and poets to Ben Franklin.
The theory behind this: When we’re in a post-sleep, dream-like mental state, we can bridge the gap between sleep and wakefulness, and bring insights and inspiration from our sleep state into our consciousness. Once we’re fully alert, our waking consciousness assumes total control, making plans and doing things — and we pass out of the more fluid, expansive state we enjoy when we’re just emerging from our rest.
Sleep can also be a powerful creativity booster because the mind, in an unconscious resting state, can forge surprising and innovative new connections. In fact, research shows that sleep can foster “remote associates” or unusual connections in the brain. And these connections can lead to exciting “a-Ha” moments upon waking.
Why not test this all out and give your creativity a helping hand by having a paper and pen by your bedside, so you can jot down any hot ideas before they slip away? Write on!
« There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. « W. Somerset Maugham
Ah, the adverb! Why among all the parts of speech is it so criticized? Why have writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King urged us to take an ax to the adverbs sprinkled across our pages? I don’t have the answer to this mystery.
Fortunately, I’ve found an zealous advocate for the adverb, a teacher and writer who takes a generous approach to adverbs, which I’m happy to share with you:
An adverb is far more than just a word ending in -ly: Along with nouns, verbs, and adjectives, it is one of the four content parts of speech used to construct sentences.
Each part performs a key function: Nouns name things, verbs specify action, and adverbs and adjectives add to, limit, or clarify nouns and verbs.
Adverbs are a valuable tool in every writer’s kit-bag and excising them from your writing will impoverish it. Adverbs play several important roles in a sentence — they make more specific and add information to verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
Adverbs are versatile: The role an adverb plays in a sentence can show up in our writing as one word: sadly. Or as a phrase: “I’ll call you in the morning.” Or as a dependent clause: “We’ll eat whenever he gets here.”
Bravo! Let’s dump the “dump adverbs” idea and focus instead on using them with precision and gusto as we all write on!
 | karinwritesdangerous… on Little Extra |
 | Terrie Wurzbacher on Little Extra |
| karinwritesdangerous… on Dolly Dances |
| Terrie Wurzbacher on Dolly Dances |
| karinwritesdangerous… on Something Wonderful |
