on writing

Literary Birthday – Jeanette Winterson, born 27 August 1959

| Paul Greer


jeanette

reblogging  Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

Literary Birthday – 27 August

Jeanette Winterson, born 27 August 1959

Seven Quotes

1. Language is what stops the heart exploding.
2. It’s not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between.
3.Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.
4. When people say that poetry is merely a luxury for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read much at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.
5. What you risk reveals what you value.
6. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book — which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little — and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.
7. Always in my books, I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens.

Jeanette Winterson’s 10 Rules for Writing

1. Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.
2. Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.
3.Love what you do.
4. Be honest with yourself. If you are no good, accept it. If the work you are ­doing is no good, accept it.
5. Don’t hold on to poor work. If it was bad when it went in the drawer it will be just as bad when it comes out.
6. Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect.
7. Take no notice of anyone with a ­gender agenda. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind.
8. Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward.
9. Trust your creativity.
10. Enjoy this work!
Winterson is a British writer who was awarded an OBE for services to literature. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television by Winterson in 1990. She has won various awards around the world for her fiction and adaptations, including the Whitbread Prize, UK, and the Prix d’argent, Cannes Film Festival. She writes regularly for various UK newspapers.

Source for 10 Rules

Source for Image

The Importance of Keeping a Journal: Anaïs Nin

Aside | | Paul Greer


Anais Nin

reblogging amandaonwriting:

“This diary is my kief, hashish, and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice. Instead of writing a novel, I lie back with this book and a pen, and dream, and indulge in refractions and defractions… I must relive my life in the dream. The dream is my only life. I see in the echoes and reverberations, the transfigurations which alone keep wonder pure. Otherwise all magic is lost. Otherwise life shows its deformities and the homeliness becomes rust… All matter must be fused this way through the lens of my vice or the rust of living would slow down my rhythm to a sob.”
~From The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 1.

“The diary taught me that it is in the moments of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately. I learned to choose the heightened moments because they are the moments of revelation.”
~From Nin’s essay On Writing, 1947.

From Flavorwire

No writing is wasted.

Quote | | Paul Greer

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”

— Erin Bow