This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are.
Terry BrooksRead
Fiction writing is a twenty-four-hou r-a-day occupation. You never leave your work behind. It is always with you, and to some extent, you are always thinking about it. You don't take your work home; your work never leaves home. It lives inside you. It resides and grows and comes alive in your mind.
Interpretation
Fiction writing is an immersive pursuit that constantly occupies the writer's mind.
This quote emphasizes the all-consuming nature of fiction writing, suggesting that it is not just a job or task to complete, but a deep-seated passion and way of life. The writer carries their work with them at all times, indicating that creativity is an ongoing, internal process that continuously evolves within their mind, making writing a personal and persistent endeavor.
In practice
During a writer's workshop, I shared the quote to illustrate the dedication required in fiction writing.
This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are.
I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.
The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can't tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all.
After all, you put a lot into creating a universe and everything that goes with it, and it seems a shame to use it only once.
If you don't think there is magic in writing, you probably won't write anything magical.
Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.
I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son (W A Mozart)is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.
In general, writers shouldn't be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.
There are two languages that I love: Farsi and Panjabi. Because the depth of Sufi thought in these two languages cannot be found in any other language.
Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.
Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.
In the early days, we just wore black onstage. Very bold, my dear. Then we introduced white, for variety, and it simply grew and grew.
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