Writing State of Mind

Currently Listening To: Born To Die, Lana Del Rey. (these are my faves)

"To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.

I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.

May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories - science fiction or otherwise.

Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."

- Ray Bradbury

I didn't have my usual 3-hour practicum (observing and teaching in a high-school English classroom) today, so I've been spending my extra time working on a short story that's due Friday. Y'all, writing is a difficult task, something you just have to sit with and struggle with and always be polishing and tweaking; that brings out about twenty-seven emotions at one time within you. Grateful to our good friend Ray here for letting me know that I'm not crazy for feelings...or, actually, that maybe all writers are crazy.

[image via We Heart It]

Writing.

“Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.”

Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

I'm currently working on a short story for class on Wednesday. I'm still at the 

beginning, still trying to coax the pieces together in my brains so I can then articulate them 

into some sort ofwritten form. It's hard, y'all. But that's all just part of the process, right?

[image via We Heart It, quote via Whatever, Gatsby]