Writers end up writing stories-or rather, stories' shadows-and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough
Interpretation
Writers create narratives that often feel incomplete, and they struggle with the dissatisfaction of never fully capturing their intentions.
This quote by Joy Williams expresses the profound sense of inadequacy that writers often experience. Despite their efforts to bring stories to life, they often feel that what they produce falls short of their vision. The phrase 'stories' shadows' suggests that the tales told are merely reflections or echoes of the deeper narratives the writers wish to convey, highlighting a continual pursuit of fulfillment in their craft that often remains elusive.
In practice
A writer could use this quote in a workshop to discuss the struggles of the creative process.
What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes...
Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face.
American poetry is this country's greatest patrimony. It takes a stranger to see some things clearly. This is one of them, and I am that stranger.
Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern.
A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.
There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.
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