When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!
Judy BlumeRead
I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like best . . . once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put the pieces together to make a picture.
Interpretation
The creative process involves rearranging and refining ideas until a cohesive work emerges.
Judy Blume’s quote emphasizes the joy of rewriting in the writing process. It illustrates that the act of reworking drafts is akin to assembling a puzzle, where initial scattered thoughts and ideas gradually come together to form a complete and meaningful narrative, showcasing how creativity thrives on revision and patience.
In practice
In a creative writing workshop, to inspire students to embrace the rewriting process.
When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!
What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.
What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.
Concentrate on how good if feels to be alive. No matter what. Just to see the color of the sky, just to smell the air, and feel the wind in your face
I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.
Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.
To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I've tried it 85 times, and I've succeeded two or three times.
Maybe, as a Chinese woman, I was never told I would be a filmmaker, so I didn't have the ego set up.
Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.
I haven't stopped painting or drawing - I've just added another medium.
You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you
Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.