When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of dedication and focus in creative writing, suggesting that a writer should care only about their craft.
Raymond Carver's quote highlights that successful writing, whether in fiction or poetry, requires a deep commitment to the writing process itself, fostering a sense of indifference to external distractions. For aspiring writers, this indifference is portrayed not as apathy, but as a concentrated passion that allows them to fully immerse themselves in their work, enabling their creativity to flourish.
In practice
In a writing workshop, you could quote Carver to encourage participants to focus deeply on their projects.
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.
Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
Our music has depth, and attempts philosophical thought and meaning with discussions of infinity, eternity and mortality. There is a line which people cross that turns it into some magical, mystical realm, for which I dont claim responsibility and dont hold any great truck with.
The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into 'I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish.'
I was a very observant child. Almost anything could become a song to me.
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
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