When I'm dying, I want to think I did what I felt was best for the words I was writing. This may mean, at any time, that I won't be publishable anymore.
William T. VollmannRead
Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one’s end….Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Novel writing is influenced by both past experiences and current emotions, altering the original intentions of the writer.
In this quote, J. L. Carr reflects on the complex process of novel writing, where memories and current realities intertwine. He suggests that as a writer engages with their past to create a narrative, the present circumstances inevitably seep into the storytelling, transforming the tone and focus of the work in unexpected ways. This highlights the dynamic nature of creativity, where personal experiences shape and reshape the art being produced.
Themes
NovelWritingMemoriesPresentStoriesCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During a writers' workshop, this quote can be mentioned to discuss the emotional journey of writing a novel.
Similar quotes
I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.
Francois TruffautRead
I think something that every actor wants, whether they've done four movies or forty movies, is they want to find the work interesting. You want to come to work and think this is going to be a challenge.
Taika WaititiRead
Each time I make a movie, it's a little bit like taking another course in something because there's an argument between these people that I don't necessarily have an answer to.
Sydney PollackRead
Music is a weapon of the future / music is the weapon of the progressives / music is the weapon of the givers of life
Fela KutiRead
Or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
William ShakespeareRead