Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.
Shirley JacksonRead
The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.
Interpretation
Writing is a personal journey that often involves confronting one's past.
Shirley Jackson suggests that every writer has an initial story to tell that is deeply personal and often tied to their family experiences. This narrative must be expressed and released before a writer can fully explore their creativity and produce additional works.
In practice
During a workshop on personal narrative, this quote can inspire participants to explore their own stories.
Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.
It watches," he added suddenly. "The house. It watches every move you make.
There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.
Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.
I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.
Nobody knows what will work until they try it. Some of comics' biggest success stories in recent years have explored subjects that no one was writing about at the time - stories no one had any reason to think would succeed. My advice? Write what you want to read. You'll have more fun doing it - and if all else fails, you'll always have at least one loyal reader.
I was in a taxi the other night, and we started talking about life and the taxi driver goes, 'Chaos and creativity go together. If you lose one per cent of your chaos, you lose your creativity.' I said that's the most brilliant thing I've heard. I needed to hear that years ago.
Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life.
Highly creative people have a gift for connecting supposedly unrelated elements and ideas. They cross borders without regard for customs posts or No Trespassing signs. They throw suspension bridges across great distances. These elegant and unexpected combinations flow together beautifully in the twilight zone, where metaphor and resemblance rules in place of logic and classification.
Every time you work on a project, it's a little vacation from the project you're working on the other 23 hours. That's the thing - it replenishes you to do something else.
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