I think that's one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process - the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.
George SaundersRead
I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Style in writing is about navigating around one's limitations.
In this quote, George Saunders expresses the idea that a writer's unique style emerges from their awareness of personal shortcomings and the choices they make to work around them. Rather than being a flawless expression of skill, style can be seen as a creative method of managing oneβs limitations and crafting a distinct voice through the nuances of what is not said or done.
Themes
StyleWritingLimitationsCreativityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
During a creative writing workshop, I shared a quote by George Saunders to encourage participants to embrace their flaws.
More from George Saunders
All quotes βI still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime.
George SaundersRead
Down in the city are the nice houses and the so-so houses and the lovers making out in dark yards and the babies crying for their moms, and I wonder if, other than Jesus, has this ever happened before. Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over, hiding in rooms, covered with blankets, bossing around their scared, embarrassed relatives. Because how would we know?
George SaundersRead
What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.
George SaundersRead
When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.
George SaundersRead
I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people.
George SaundersRead
Similar quotes
When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.
Amos OzRead
Staring Girl I once knew a girl who would just stand there and stare. At anyone or anything, she seemed not to care She'd stare at the ground, She'd stare at the sky. She'd stare at you for hours, and you'd never know why. But after winning the local staring contest, she finally gave her eyes a well-deserved rest.
Tim BurtonRead
Thereβs nothing as glamorous to me as a record store.
Paul MccartneyRead
The writing of the Beatles, or John and Paul's contribution to the Beatles in the late sixties - had a kind of depth to it, a more mature, more intellectual approach. We were different people, we were older. We knew each other in all kinds of different ways than when we wrote together as teenagers and in our older twenties.
John LennonRead
People think because it's photography it's not worth as much, and because it's a woman artist, you're still not getting as much - there's still definitely that happening. I'm still really competitive when it comes to, I guess, the male painters and male artists. I still think that's really unfair.
Cindy ShermanRead
We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing.
Helen FrankenthalerRead