Terrifically wise, useful and encouraging. It turns out that I had read (and really liked) a substantial series of extracts from it a while back (here), from which I particularly liked the idea of writing towards what you want to know. One theme is a focus on language, and the value and rewards of following it. I liked this one, daring raids on the inarticulate and all:
A SECRET HEARING
"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself." - Virginia Woolf
Often, in the midst of a novel or a story, you'll be surprised to realize that you have little or no idea where you are going. You're operating on the fumes of the language and the vague feeling that what you are doing will eventually have texture and depth. It's a deep-sea dive without very much training or equipment, but suddenly, a few feet down, you hit upon a word or an image and you realize with a start that this is the path you were meant to take. You don't know why. You don't know where. You don't even know how. It is a form of astounded hearing, a secret listening. You have made a daring raid on the inarticulate. This feeling has its own energy. You have to follow it. You'd be a fool if you didn't at least pursue the sentence in whatever direction it is taking you.
It's like solving a perplexing question in deep-sea physics: Why was I allowed to come to such a depth? There is a moment when the solution is so simple and evident that you wonder why you hadn't come upon it before: when, like Archimedes, you notice the bathwater suddenly rise. You know what you have found, what you've been seeking for years.
The simplicity of it is stunning simply because it seemed so difficult in the beginning. Now it is there. It has appeared. Somehow the inarticulate has been ransacked. It exists because writing is about trying to achieve a fundamental truth that everybody knows is there, but nobody has quite yet located.
Follow it.
A SECRET HEARING
"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself." - Virginia Woolf
Often, in the midst of a novel or a story, you'll be surprised to realize that you have little or no idea where you are going. You're operating on the fumes of the language and the vague feeling that what you are doing will eventually have texture and depth. It's a deep-sea dive without very much training or equipment, but suddenly, a few feet down, you hit upon a word or an image and you realize with a start that this is the path you were meant to take. You don't know why. You don't know where. You don't even know how. It is a form of astounded hearing, a secret listening. You have made a daring raid on the inarticulate. This feeling has its own energy. You have to follow it. You'd be a fool if you didn't at least pursue the sentence in whatever direction it is taking you.
It's like solving a perplexing question in deep-sea physics: Why was I allowed to come to such a depth? There is a moment when the solution is so simple and evident that you wonder why you hadn't come upon it before: when, like Archimedes, you notice the bathwater suddenly rise. You know what you have found, what you've been seeking for years.
The simplicity of it is stunning simply because it seemed so difficult in the beginning. Now it is there. It has appeared. Somehow the inarticulate has been ransacked. It exists because writing is about trying to achieve a fundamental truth that everybody knows is there, but nobody has quite yet located.
Follow it.
