Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. _x000D_ On the best days, all three.
Interpretation
Writing serves multiple purposes: it can be an expression of creativity, a protest, or a means of making things right.
Teju Cole's quote reflects the multifaceted nature of writing. It can be an artistic endeavor ('writing as writing'), a form of protest or rebellion against the status quo ('writing as rioting'), and a way to convey truths or rectify injustices ('writing as righting'). On the most fulfilling occasions, writing embodies all three aspects, showcasing its power to influence, create, and heal.
In practice
Using this quote in a writing workshop to inspire participants about the power of their words.
The original sense of the word 'influence' is 'to flow into.' For the most part, these writers that I admire... their style flows into me without my intervention, which is what explains the broad range of writers who I've been compared with; it reflects my reading.
The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives.
To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.
We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader.
Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.
While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.
You've only got 12 notes and however you mix them up is your thing.
I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
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