Writing Quote Friday #15

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” 

― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

Demanding the Muse's Presence

This past weekend I went "camping" with the hubby. I put "camping" in quotes because this was lightweight camping unfamiliar to this Alaskan. This was camping in a campsite with neighbors camping twenty feet away in their RVs and with running water and toilets. This was not real camping.

However, despite this Washington camping experience, I was hoping that it would jumpstart my Muse and reinvigorate my writing. Sadly, I am several days returned from "camping" and have found that not to be the case. So now comes the moment when I must demand my Muse's presence. 

Who was it that said, "I write when I am inspired, and I see to it that I am inspired at nine o'clock every morning?"* That is the point I am at this week. While there are a million things I could be doing and a million others that must be done, I intend to carve out 15-30 minutes for myself today and write. 

I am working on a new WIP, a short story, for a class I am currently taking, and I have a deadline for it. I've got to get about half of it written by that deadline. While this is a short story, I've made it more complex than some of my classmates', and I've got several thousand words to write before I meet that halfway mark. So I'll be powering through that soon, I am sure. I just need the time to sit down and write.

So instead of pretending that I don't have to write, or taking a break while my family is in town, or while we work on some projects around the house, or otherwise making excuses, I intend to demand my Muse's presence by sitting down to write and placing my fingers on the keyboard. 

Time to write.

*footnote: And after a quick Google search, that appears to be Peter De Vries.

Writing Quote Friday #14

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

― Madeleine L'Engle

Writing Quote Friday #13

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation."

--Graham Greene, actor

Writing Quote Friday #12

"My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living."

--Anais Nin

Writing Quote Friday #11

"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature."

--Ernest Hemingway

Writing Quote Friday #9

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

― Toni Morrison

Writing Quote Friday #7

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” 

Robert Frost

Revelation by Robert Frost

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated hear
Till someone really find us out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hid-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

Writing Quote Friday #6

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath

Writing Quote Friday #5

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

Mark Twain

Writing Quote Friday #4

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Stephen King, On Writing

(You heard the man, get reading!)

Writing Quote Friday #3

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

~Benjamin Franklin

Writing Quote Friday #2

This Friday's quote on writing comes to us courtesy of About.com.

"If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. The consistency, the monotony, the certainty, all vagaries and passions are covered by this daily reoccurrence. You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning. Sleep comes to you each day, and so does the muse." (July 2000)

~Walter Mosley

Source

Quotes

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

Q is for Quotes.

More specifically, one quote: 

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."  ~E.L. Doctorow

This is one of my all time favorite quotes about writing.

As a writer, I have a thousand little voices in my head. As I go through my day, I am bombarded with voices. I see a car on the road driving recklessly, and I think that would be a great scene in a novel. I'm in a coffee shop and I overhear someone talking about their son who is in jail, and I think there's my next plot.

According to PubMed:

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it hard to:

• Tell the difference between what is real and not real 
• Think clearly 
• Have normal emotional responses 
• Act normally in social situations 

At first, you may have the following symptoms:

• Irritable or tense feeling 
• Trouble concentrating 
• Trouble sleeping 

Disorganized schizophrenia symptoms may include:

• Childlike behavior 
• Problems thinking and explaining your ideas clearly 
• Showing little emotion 

Writing, at times, feels like schizophrenia. You've got a million voices telling you what to write and what to do. It's impossible to concentrate on any one thing. You react abnormally to a social situation because you're thinking about how your character would react in that situation instead. When you lay down to sleep, your mind runs full speed ahead. You're distanced from the world, alone in your fictional one, and yet when you sit down to write, you have trouble communicating your ideas clearly.

Sometimes it's so easy to get caught up in the haphazard world of writing and surrender ourselves to it. But it's important to recognize that this is the life of a writer. As a writer, you seek the story in your head in its entirety. You want that little voice to become a loud, obnoxious voice clamoring for escape until it emerges, like Athena from Zeus' head: fully grown and authoritative. And a writer won't stop until it is. Because only that can silence the voice.

~I.E.