The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.
Interpretation
Writing fiction allows for creativity and innovation in storytelling.
Penelope Lively highlights the joy of writing fiction, emphasizing its inherent flexibility and the opportunities it offers for exploring new narrative techniques and character development. Through fiction, writers can constantly discover fresh perspectives and unique ways to engage with their audience, making the craft dynamic and ever-evolving.
In practice
During a writing workshop, I shared a quote from Penelope Lively to inspire my peers to explore new story ideas.
All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.
In old age, you realise that while you're divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will. As a writer it puts one at a distinct advantage.
The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.
Giving presents is one of the most possessive things we do, did you realize that? It's the way we keep a hold on other people. Plant ourselves in their lives.
The idea that memory is linear is nonsense. What we have in our heads is a collection of frames. As to time itself-can it be linear when all these snatches of other presents exist at once in your mind? A very elusive and tricky concept, time.
Yes, actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write about them, Sirk's been in everything I've done. Not Sirk himself, but what I've learned from his work.
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
Being essentially a creator, I never set out to shock, always thinking about creating my work and not about the benefits it could produce.
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, Or the tale of Troy divine.
Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.
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