Wisdom of Writers
Even before I wrote for a living, I read and absorbed the advice that dropped from the lips of other writers. I’ve amassed a collection of these gems on my hard drive over the years. This week, in honor of the back-to-school mentality that permeates my soul at this time of year, I thought I’d see if any of the quotes I’ve saved actually makes sense, decades after I collected them.
You know what I discovered? The oldest quotes are the most useless. One I harvested earlier this year is gold. And I would have expected better from the talented writers and creatives who uttered these words.
The words of wisdom come from people such as E.L. Doctorow, David Lynch, Dennis Potter, (maybe) Bob Dylan, Lawrence Block, and James Lee Burke.
Here’s part of what I’m saying:
September 1 is the new January 1. If you lose track of time, Labor Day is the holiday that shakes you out of your reverie and reminds you that all those lovely resolutions you made last December now have only four months to come to fruition.
I’ve had a pretty decent writing year but I am forced to admit that client work and the garden took precedence from May to August. I have far more jars of pickles and tomatoes, far more frozen blueberries, figs, and spinach than short stories.
Would that my story crop matched the garden crop!
To inspire myself, this week I reviewed some quotes I’ve collected over the years from other writers and creative types. Some of these quotes have lived on my hard drive for more than thirty years. I’ve done little with them, and now—as a wiser and (ahem) older writer, I understand why. Most of them are full of it.
Just as a for-instance, I remember reading an interview with David Lynch when I was young, working in NYC, and obsessed with his television show, Twin Peaks. The interview was set in a SoHo diner, long gone, that was right around the block from my office on Broadway. How exciting, thought I, the great director dines at Jerry’s!
What he revealed in that interview was that he was obsessed with sameness. He’d eat the same exact thing for lunch every day.(I think it was a tuna melt.) This clarified his thinking, and he came to regard the foodstuffs as beautiful in their own right. But looking back, I’m not sure that that is great advice for all writers.
As a young writer, I craved knowing what other writers thought and did. Now, as an older person and writer, I know that the only thing that matters (with respect to process) is what works for me. It’s fun to experiment with different techniques for new projects, just to see what sticks. If something you borrowed from another writer does work for you, it’s because of your intrinsic qualities, not anyone else’s.
But hey, it’s not worth belaboring this. The post is here, if you want to check it out:
All I Know About Writing Comes From Something Somebody (maybe) Said
If you’re curious about the title, I might add that quotes found on the internet are often discovered to be spurious. That’s why I tried to link to the articles where my inspirational quotes came from. Only one quote in the article is unverified. Something I heard another writer quote this past week. That’s all. I’ll be back in October with a few fall pieces for that site.
