Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process

Poetry privileges subjectivity. It foregrounds the interior life of the writer, who is trying to draw in a reader. And it gets readers into contact with their own subjective life.

For me, almost everything in literature almost always comes down to the question of point of view. Whose story is this, and who’s telling the story of that person?

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all,

Writing free verse, it’s hard to know exactly when a line has the feel or rhythm that you want. It’s hard to describe, though you know it when you feel it. For me, it’s often about gracefulness. I want graceful lines and graceful sentences. I try to write very simply. The vocabulary is simple, the sentences tend to be quite conventional—subject, ve

sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there’s something more to say. This means I’ve hit on something unconscious enough to write about—something with enough unknown in there to be brought out.

It’s a voice, and an invitation, that’s very difficult for me to refuse. It’s like finding a good friend who has valuable information to share. Here’s somebody, it says, who can provide entertainment, an escape, and maybe even a way of looking at the world that will open your eyes. In fiction, that’s irresistible. It’s why we read.

Healing is relational. We like to think that one can heal oneself just by force of will, but my experience certainly aligns with the argument the passage makes: We need other people.

I believe that: A book is going to have a voice and I have to find it.

writers sometimes call the “As you know, Bob,” paragraph, in which you do this big info dump. There’s pleasure in working it out. Besides, brief, understated descriptions tend to better serve the lens of character. Real people don’t think of things in quite so many adverbs, or adjectives.