Art is not linear. Neither is the artist’s life, but we forget that. We try to “plan” our life and “plan” our career–as if we could…And yet experience teaches us that life, especially life in the arts, is as much about mystery as it is about mastery.”–Julia Cameron
Reading The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity and really digging it. It feels like a book you could just pick up and flip through whenever you needed it.
(image: Sound wave by betmari)
“Even though one loses out here and there, and even though one sometimes feels a falling off, one must rally and take courage again, even though things should turn out differently from what one originally intended…For great things do not just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.”—Vincent van Gogh
Take courage, artists. Every day.
(Image: Painter on His Way to Work. Arles, August 1888. oil on canvas)
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”—Madeleine L’Engle
(Image by molosovsky)
_(photo_by_Carl_van_Vechten).jpg)
“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”—William Faulkner
A little inspiration for anyone writing today, especially those of you participating in NaNoWriMo. Forget what anyone else is doing or has done–focus on what you’re doing right now.
(Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Van Vechten Collection, reproduction number LOT 12735, no. 368.)
“Why do you write for children?” My immediate response to this question is, “I don’t.” … If it’s not good enough for adults, it’s not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.–Madeleine L’Engle
“I would say to get the character in your mind. Once he is in your mind, and he is right, and he’s true, then he does the work himself. All you need to do then is to trot along behind him and put down what he does and what he says…You’ve got to believe in him. You’ve got to—to feel that—that what—that he is—is alive, and then, of course, you will have to do a certain amount of—of picking and choosing among the possibilities of his action, so that his actions fit the character which you believe in…But the character’s got to be true by your conception and by your experience, and that would include, as we’ve just said, what you’ve read, what you’ve imagined, what you’ve heard, all that going to giving you the gauge to measure this imaginary character by, and once he comes alive and true to you, and—and he’s important and moving, then it’s not too much trouble to put him down.”–William Faulkner
As always, Faulkner finds the perfect words to describe the creation process. So often I feel like I just need to see in my mind what a character is doing. I can’t force it; I just have to let them walk around so I can “put down” what they say and do.
Check out more of Faulkner’s thoughts on writing here (wahoowa!) and check out more quotes on writing here.
“Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.”
― Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty
This perfectly describes the writing process for me. Yes, it’s a job and can be hard and not everyone has that skill, but it’s also the way I process the world and how I go about my daily life. It makes me think “Oh, I bet this WIP character goes to Catholic school,” or “This is exactly how this WIP character first realized she loved X.” I love spending time in these worlds and with these people who don’t actually exist.
Daniel Tiger. Photo by Greg Dunlap from Stockholm, Sweden
via Wikicommons
“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”–Fred Rogers
It’s been a tough month for a lot of wonderful people I know, so I wanted to share this fantastic quote by one of the all-time best people. No matter what you’re going through right now, remember that you matter to so many other people.
It’s not a poem about New Year’s, but T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” is about chance and transformation and the old and new. These lines feel particularly appropriate for New Year’s Day:
(image: Powell’s)
The new year is a natural time to start thinking about change and possibility and transformation. With The Chance You Won’t Return coming out in April, 2014 is primed to be a year of big changes. So excited to share them all with you and my fellow ’14 debut authors!
And in case you need to see my enthusiasm for 2014 in gif form (of course you do), head over to OneFour KidLit.
Some link-y goodness:
