As many of you know, I didn't start out as a prose writer, and so I have the constantly amazing experience of finishing a chapter, thinking--well, not that it's awful, but I certainly don't have the experience of "Dear God, this is the most marvelous thing ever written." I tend to turn the computer off, work on something else, then go back to the stuff I've put on the computer and read over it later (a process that seems chaotic to some, but works perfectly fine to me). I just looked over the difficult chapter I wrote and realized it's actually much better than I thought.
Which reminds me, somehow, that I was recently tagged by Kate of "Being and Writing" (see my links for her blog). I have to find ten quotes which express my philosophy on writing. I find that I really don't have one because I'm too darn busy writing to think about it! But here are some quotes I like (I'll do four for now):
1) (paraphrased because I don't know exactly where this occurs in Paula):
A writer is never really done with a novel; she just gives up.--Isabel Allende
2) Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. --Flannery O'Connor
3) Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be--Mark Twain
4) People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?"...The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.”--MFK Fisher
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