I was reading some of Wallace Stegner's thoughts on writing this morning and came across this: "...talent is very common. It's as common as salmon eggs. And for the same reasons that millions of salmon eggs produce only a few salmon, millions of talents, through bad luck, ill health, poverty, bad social conditions, all sorts of causes, simply never come to anything...". From Literary by Accident.
This reminded me of what I find so frustrating in the writing group. I see writers with talent who have the capacity to succeed as writers, and the cause of their failure isn't any of the things that Stegner lists. It's lack of discipline (myself included), laziness (myself included), and poor boundaries (when it comes to putting your own needs first - myself included). I'll oversimplify the matter of motivation by stating that if you are really a writer, you write. If you are a serious writer with aspirations, you write every day, improving your craft and staying in the zone. If writing is a river, you're not a minnow. You need to be cruising the currents as a big, wily trout.
Wallace Stegner also wrote that a writer lives within a cultural matrix. Create your own writing matrix by first placing your ass in your chair. From that vantage point, enter your brain by whatever ritual suits you best, and create something on the page.
Don't end up being like the majority of the salmon.
This reminded me of what I find so frustrating in the writing group. I see writers with talent who have the capacity to succeed as writers, and the cause of their failure isn't any of the things that Stegner lists. It's lack of discipline (myself included), laziness (myself included), and poor boundaries (when it comes to putting your own needs first - myself included). I'll oversimplify the matter of motivation by stating that if you are really a writer, you write. If you are a serious writer with aspirations, you write every day, improving your craft and staying in the zone. If writing is a river, you're not a minnow. You need to be cruising the currents as a big, wily trout.
Wallace Stegner also wrote that a writer lives within a cultural matrix. Create your own writing matrix by first placing your ass in your chair. From that vantage point, enter your brain by whatever ritual suits you best, and create something on the page.
Don't end up being like the majority of the salmon.
She's only three but she sits down and types
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