Typewritten Teacup

It's nice to know you're not alone in your feelings

"I seem to have lost all sense of style and yet I am haunted by the necessity of style. And that story I can't write weaves itself into all I see, into all I speak, into all I think, into the lines of every book I try to read. I feel my brain. I am distinctly conscious of the contents of my head. My story is there in a fluid—in an evading shape. I can't get hold of it. It is all there—to bursting, yet I can't get hold of it any more than you can grasp a handful of water.

I never mean to be slow. The stuff comes out at its own rate. I am always ready to put it down... the trouble is that too often, alas, I've to wait for the sentence, for the word. The worst is that while I'm thus powerless to produce, my imagination is extremely active; whole paragraphs, whole pages, whole chapters pass through my mind. Everything is there: descriptions, dialogue, reflection, everything, everything but the belief, the conviction, the only thing needed to make me put pen to paper. I've thought out a volume a day till I felt sick of mind and heart and gone to bed completely done up, without having written a line. The effort I put out should give birth to Masterpieces as big as mountains, and it brings forth a ridiculous mouse now and then."

-- Joseph Conrad


"Writing is easy: all you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

- Gene Fowler -


This is where I've been lately. I've been busting my ass on a poem I'm to read at the wedding of two dear friends and trying like hell to get Freelancer moving. The Fowler quote really applies. Writing is easy - writing well is sometimes impossible.

posted by Sharon @ 9:45 PM