I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the careful and thoughtful process of completing a creative work, likening it to the gentle act of putting a child to sleep.
Colm Toibin's quote emphasizes the importance of intentionality and sensitivity in the creative process, particularly when completing a novel. The metaphor of ending a novel being akin to putting a child to sleep highlights the need for a gentle, gradual approach rather than a sudden, abrupt conclusion, suggesting that creators should be mindful of the emotional weight and impact of their endings.
In practice
A writer's workshop discussing the challenges of concluding a story.
You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in your old rooms, the world you've made for yourself ceases to be real. Everything seems to crumble. Anyone who's been sent away to boarding school can understand that.
History is a way of interpreting, rather than, say, knowing, the past. It is usually a set of disputes between those who have access to the same sources. It depends on ideology as much as voting in an election does.
Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and need and hollowness and a feeling as close to anger as I will ever be able to manage.
People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.
It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.
Everyone who's in America spends the first few years not experiencing it. The person is frightened by the newness of the place and doesn't see things. Her emotional universe becomes the entire universe. And then when she thinks of home, her distance in space can seem like a distance in time.
Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.
If you can make people understand why freedom is so important through the arts, that would be a big help.
Nobody sang better than my mom. That's why I've never even thought of singing for singing sake. I've always thought of a song as an acting piece, as a way to say something.
The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at the heart of the cultural elite, who contend that it's not a pill, that it shouldn't be asked to perform some specific function, especially something as egocentric as to 'cheer you up' or to 'make you a more empathetic person.'
The great thing about jamming is that you come in with zero preconceptions. Someone might want to play something that suggests something else to you, and the next thing you know you're on a 20-minute adventure.
You have kids studying master class visual arts who are pushed to make films that will be successful economically; that's what they focus on. So they work for corporate interest instead of artistic expression.
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