Monday morning quote for writers

On Independence Day here's a quote from a contemporary American writer.
Joy Williams is from Massachusetts and her last novel was The Quick and the Dead.

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. Whenever the writer writes, it's always three or four or five o'clock in the morning in his head. Those horrid hours are the writer's days and nights when he is writing.

JOY WILLIAMS

What do you think - do you mentally occupy those lonely early morning hours when you face the computer screen or the intrimidating snow of blank paper? Or is it a warmer, softer experience for you?

I love the idea of words exploding in the face of the reader. That's something to aim for: not all the time of course, but a series of explosions....

Monday morning quote for writers

Good advice from the author of Wolf Hall and my all-time favourite historical novel In Place of Greater Safety. (If you're studying the French Revolution read it, she doesn't put a foot wrong.) And here's what to do when you're staring at the computer screen and all ideas seem to have gone on holiday.

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.

HILARY MANTEL

Quote for Monday

“A book, like a wedding, is the product of many people.  Without a wedding, there would be no bride, and without an author, there would be no book.  The bride would be a bit lonely standing at the altar without very many other people ...”  from Katie Fford’s acknowledgements in her novel, ‘Wedding Season’, Arrow Books

QUOTE FOR THE WEEK

Maya Angelou

 'I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.'

(I've been without the internet for four days and that also gives an insight into character.)
Me: I like rainy days. I'm second generation Irish. I have to like rainy days...

Lost luggage hasn't been a major feature in my life (that's tempting providence, I know) but someone being very helpful did once throw out a week's clean washing (my clean washing) instead of the detritus left behind after a by election campaign and I dealt with it with quiet aplomb. Well, that's how I remember it...

And I don't do tangled Christmas lights. I do Christmas.
The lights are a side issue: they are are not on the same scale as cooking turkey, buying presents and saying how big the christmas tree should be (bigger the better). But if I had to do tangled lights at some point I'd say it's Christmas...let's not break our hearts over this. Let's buy some new ones to tangle up.

Quotes for St David's Day

Aneurin Bevan

Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ can excuse indifference to individual suffering. There is no test for progress other than its impact on the individual.

Dylan Thomas 

Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need to read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

David Lloyd George

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.  

A Quote for Writers

Just found a quote I really like which is perfect for this time of year when we are thinking about the future and what we want to achieve.

There's a word for a writer who never gives up... published" - Joe Konrath

And apparently he knows what he is talking about. Joe Konrath is an American author who mixes humour with horror: he collected nearly 500 rejections before seeing his words in print.

Favourite household chore

Been off line for four days, seven hours and....(have spotted gap in the market - sympathy cards definitely appropriate for this situation) so no posts for awhile, no tweets, no emails, no nothing. So I thought I'd mark my return with a quote close to my heart

“My second favourite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.” Erma Bombeck

That message should be displayed in cross stitch in every home...

Erma Bombeck is new to me but I imagine not to anyone on the other side of the Atlantic because her columns on  a housewife's lot in the mid west were apparently read twice weekly by thirty million readers of 900 newspapers in US and Canada. (Can that statistic really be true? Anyone good at maths reckon that's feasible...?) 
That's a helluva lot of readers.

Thoughts for the start of a new creative writing term

On studying creative writing

"It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way."

Ernest Hemingway

On against-the-clock class exercises

These artificial limits create a crisis, which rouses the brain’s resources; the compulsion towards haste overthrows the ordinary precautions, flings everything into top gear, and many things that are usually hidden find themselves rushed into the open. Barriers break down, prisoners come out of their cells.”  Ted Hughes

On what writers do

Fail. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Becket