The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it's just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of consistent creativity and the fear of having no ongoing projects.
Terry Pratchett expresses his belief in the necessity of maintaining a creative flow by starting a new literary endeavor immediately after completing the previous one. This illustrates not only his dedication to writing but also the anxiety that can accompany the empty space left when one lacks a project, highlighting the psychological need for continuous engagement in creative work.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to encourage participants to keep writing: 'As Terry Pratchett said, I have to start a new book right after finishing the last one.'
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
Mistakes are a drag, because you get in the area of regret and self-pity.
I'm often guilty of overcooking and too much arrangement and throwing too much at it. But I think as I get older, I'm learning better when to be empty and when to be full.
paranoia is just a heightened sense of awareness
You will become a teacher of yourself when for the same things that you blame others, you also blame yourself.
I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.
Is detachment the answer to freedom? No, because detachment is negative - it is to be without. The answer must be positive - I must replace what I have with something better.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.