That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain - they cannot be otherwise.
Interpretation
Fiction writers are shaped by their unique perspectives, which can seem unusual to others.
This quote by Zadie Smith highlights the intrinsic nature of fiction writers and their creative process. It suggests that the qualities that may appear alarming or unconventional in writers are not merely eccentricities, but rather the natural outcome of their distinct cognitive and emotional frameworks. Writers perceive the world differently, and this unique outlook is what enables them to create compelling narratives.
In practice
In a literary workshop, discussing the creative process of authors.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
Poetry is a process of getting back to the unconscious. Hence, I am always writing-even when I'm not facing the white space. I feel writers are like reservoirs of images. We take in what is around us.
Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.
To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire and motivate.
There's a difference between ad-libbing and improvising. And there's a difference between not knowing what to do and just saying something. Or making choices as an actor. As a writer also, as a person who's making a film, as a cameraman, everything is a choice. And it seems to me I don't really have to direct anyone or write down that somebody's getting drunk; all I have to do is say that there's a bottle there and put a bottle there and then they're going to get drunk.
Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.
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