A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
Most people won't realise that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.
Interpretation
Writing is a skill that requires practice and learning over time.
Katherine Anne Porter's quote emphasizes that writing is not just a natural talent but a craft that can be honed through dedicated practice and study. Just like any other profession, aspiring writers should approach it with the mindset of an apprentice, recognizing the need for continuous learning and improvement to master the art of writing.
In practice
In a writing workshop, you could use this quote to encourage participants to embrace the learning process.
A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.
Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught. It can only be learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself.
You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.
They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.
Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.
Now and again thousands of memories _x000D_ converge, harmonize, _x000D_ arrange themselves around a central idea _x000D_ in a coherent form, _x000D_ and I write a story.
Giving every child a chance to reach their full potential is the best work anyone can do
I am moreover inclined to be concise when I reflect on the constant occupation of the citizens in public and private affairs, so that in their few leisure moments they may read and understand as much as possible.
To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.
I always wanted to grow up in a house full of books, English books, and I wanted the sort of fireplaces that worked, overstuffed chairs, that whole kind of fantasy of a bookish New England life. So the library gave me that; for the hours that I was there, I was surrounded by that atmosphere that I craved in my life.
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