I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.
Interpretation
Art involves embracing uncertainty and finding joy in the process of creation.
Dani Shapiro's quote emphasizes that being an artist means accepting the unpredictable nature of creativity. It suggests that the challenges and surprises faced during the artistic journey can sharpen one's skills and lead to unexpected joys, highlighting the importance of embracing uncertainty as part of the creative process.
In practice
In a speech about the creative process, one might quote this to inspire fellow artists to embrace challenges.
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.
Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.
Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.
When we reach reflexively for something to dull an ache inside of us, in that very moment of reaching, we are hiding from our pain. We're storing it away. Tamping it down.
Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, in order to describe the indescribable. They might seem to be writing in French, English, or Spanish, but really they were writing in the language of butterflies, crows, and hanged men.
Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
A crime is like a crack in reality, and it is the author's role to explore those cracks. As a writer, I like to see how they impinge on people.
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
I try to have each book be an antidote to the one before.
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