Zen in the Art of Writing

Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.

How do you commence to start to begin an almost new kind of writing, to terrify and scare? You stumble into it, mostly. You don’t know what you’re doing, and suddenly, it’s done.

The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, reading your story, will catch fire, too?

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together. Now, it’s your turn. Jump!

Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a lesson to be studied. There is no failure unless one stops. Not to work is to cease, tighten up, become nervous and therefore destructive of the creative process.

if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself.

if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer.

If only we could remember, fame and money are gifts given us only after we have gifted the world with our best, our lonely, our individual truths.