On Writing

Your ambition is not to write the Great American Novel. Your ambition is to finish the damn book. This is a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again. It’s true of so many things in our lives. Because we’re afraid of failing, sometimes we turn away from it and don’t do it at all. As much as it would have hurt to write a book that everyone hated,... See more

This is an insight that has been repeated by artists, too. Pablo Picasso: “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” James Baldwin: “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.” Bob Dylan: “To be creative you’ve got to be u... See more

“I only hope it is some good. I have very grave doubts sometimes. I don’t want this to seem hurried. It must be just as slow and measured as the rest but I am sure of one thing — it isn’t the great book I had hoped it would be. It’s just a run-of-the-mill book. And the awful thing is that it is absolutely the best I can do. Now to work on it.”— Joh... See more

One thing I’ve sometimes known and sometimes forgotten is that writing is a side effect of living, not the other way around. There are years that are for listening and reading and not producing that much. Sometimes doing your work is a critical and life-sustaining act, and other times writing is just something you’re hiding in; our creative lives c... See more

‘I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved, all the cities I have visited.’

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

Joyce was in the habit of reading some of his own fiction to his pupils. After one of their lessons, Schmitz admitted that he, too, had been a writer once. Curious, Joyce asked to read his work, and Schmitz lent him his two novels. At their next lesson, Joyce arrived with an urgent question: “Do you know that you are a neglected writer?”

Lamott writes, “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.”

She would wake at 2am and write until 6am before starting her shift, then she would go to a cafe when it finished at lunchtime and write all afternoon.