I enjoy sewing things over. By then, you’ve tested the fit. You know the construction methods. You have it down and at the end, you get that clean clean clean satisfied feeling. Congratulations, it all worked out just like you planned!
Yeah, you don’t get that much with writing.
“To lack confidence at the outset seems rational to me. It doesn’t matter that something you’ve done before worked out well. Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you.”
—Writer John McPhee, Draft No.4
“You are like someone left in the woods with only an axe and a clear memory of houses deciding to build a house. You will furnish everything with that axe. Also the woods is your life. You are the axe.”
—Writer Alexander Chee
“You’re talking about the creative not-knowing. It’s really important because your head only knows what it knows, okay. And the questions don’t necessarily have answers. They're just itching because they need expression and they need forms; they need nuance, and their significance needs to be acknowledged. So it’s a bit Rilke here: learn to love the question.”
—Artist Lindy Lee, interviewed for Vault in 2020
“I think the work tells you where it wants to go, that’s what I’ve found. It’s not even me deciding at a certain point. The work talks to me, and I think every artist would go through the same process.”
—Artist Patrizia Biondi, interviewed for Vault in 2020
“Doubt is not only a virtue in intelligence; it is a necessity. Not a single idea or work of art could be generated without it and although it is often uncomfortable, it is also exciting.”
—Writer Siri Hustvedt, ‘Delusions of Certainty’ in A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women
“We will always get in our own way, but certain questions need just the grace of our allowing them to reveal themselves. They are the deepest questions, I think. I can ask a question just with my head but I’m probably going to try to answer it…with my intellect and it won’t truly incorporate all the heart truths that are hard won in human life; all of the relationships and experiences. And that mix is very magical…If we don't allow this not knowing to happen, I don't think we can be creative.”
—Artist Lindy Lee, interviewed for Vault in 2020
“Slowness, in my case, is always about fear. It is always about an inability to face the material that must be written.”
—Writer Siri Hustvedt, ‘Inside the Room’ in A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women
“There seems to be a fine ship at anchor, fear is the anchor, convention is the chain, ghosts stalk the decks, the sails are filled with pride and the ship does not move. But there are moments for all of us in which the anchor is weighed. Moments in which we learn what it feels like to move freely not held back by pride and fear.”
—Artist Agnes Martin, On the Perfection Underlying Life
“Just saying it could even make it happen.”
—Kate Bush, Cloudbursting
“What most of us already know is that writing is a mode of thinking…As we write, as we express our initial thoughts, new ones spring to mind, to elaborate or complicate the initial ideas. We might call these inspirations, or more humbly surprises, but either way I suspect they’re at the heart of the pleasure of the enterprise.”
—Writer Peter Ho Davies, The Art of Revision
“It’s never done. If I had a chance now with every book I wrote, every page would be a little different. Commas would be moved, words. And I think that’s beautiful, actually. That’s a good thing. It reminds us that the artist and the mind and the poem still grow.”
—Writer Ocean Vuong
I don’t normally print things out so this is a milestone for me. Chuffed. Horrified. And now the real work begins…
What I’m writing…
I wrote about Todd McMillan’s new works and also took a look at a fascinating textile exhibition. My short story Soroche came out in Meanjin a few weeks ago (paywall $). I’ve put the short fiction aside for the moment and jumped back into the novel—if you have any great editing resources please sling them my way!
What I’m reading…
I enjoyed Eda Gunaydin’s essay collection Root & Branch, Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, and Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment, a fascinating and beautifully written book about abandoned places and what happens when you take the people out.
I also read a new essay by Robin Wall Kimmerer, returned to an old piece by Megan Dunn, fangirled over Kathy Fish, and loved these podcasts with curator & craft writer Glenn Adamson and writer Lydia Davis.
x Jane
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