If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the practicality of writing shorter works to hone one's skills, especially when time is limited.
Ben Okri suggests that while writing a novel may seem overwhelming due to time constraints, creating a short story is a more manageable task. He believes that short stories provide an excellent opportunity for budding writers to practice and refine their craft, allowing them to develop their storytelling abilities without the commitment of a longer piece.
In practice
In a writing workshop, a mentor might say this quote to encourage students to start with short stories.
One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.
Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.
The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
We can still astonish the gods in humanity_x000D_ _x000D_ And be the stuff of future legends,_x000D_ _x000D_ If we but dare to be real,_x000D_ _x000D_ And have the courage to see_x000D_ _x000D_ That this is the time to dream_x000D_ _x000D_ The best dream of them all.
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
Imagination helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work.
In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.
Or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
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