You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes writing as a conversation with both past and contemporary literary influences.
Raymond Carver reflects on the nature of writing, suggesting that a writer engages not only with their own thoughts and experiences but also with a community of writersβboth those who have passed away and those still alive. This indicates that writing is deeply rooted in the appreciation of literature and the influence of other authors, which shapes a writer's voice and style.
In practice
In a writing workshop to inspire new authors, one might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of literary influence.
Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning. Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgivable mistakes? Yes, given half a chance. Yes.
Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.
Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
When I'm writing, I write every day. It's lovely when that's happening. One day dovetailing into the next. Sometimes I don't even know what day of the week it is.
It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.
I really am a theater person. That means you put something out there, and you let it go. Tomorrow night is a new performance.
We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.
Poetry confronts in the most clear-eyed way just those emotions which consciousness wishes to slide by.
I learned not to care ... and to write for an imaginary reader whose tastes were similar to my own.
The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are.
No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.
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