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Quotes

"As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall." ~Virginia Woolf

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." ~C.S. Lewis

"The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative."
~Doris Lessing

"Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer's life."
~Stephen King

"You know, I'm a storyteller. We are storytellers. And ours is an ancient tradition, contemporized by the cinema and the capturing of light. And we should all be very proud of our place in society. On any given night, millions of people across the world buy a ticket for adventures that only we as storytellers can provide. We release burdens, we galvanize emotions, we make people laugh, we make people talk over breakfast. This is a great job and I want to encourage every one of you in this room to give everything you can to the story. God bless narrative. God bless originality."
~Russell Crowe
2002 SAG Award Winner

"When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
~Kurt Vonnegut

"Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done."
~Anne Lamott

"America is now wholly given over to a d****d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand."
~Hawthorne's 1855 letter to his publisher William D. Ticknor, quoted in Pattee, Fred L. The Feminine Fifties. NY: Appleton-Century Co., 1940. p. 110.

November 14th, 2006

I am Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy & Sleepy, but not Bashful, Happy or Doc

OMG, I’m so ENVIOUS – or maybe just intimidated! Found in the comments at Diana Peterfreund’s blog, check out this author’s plotting board, er, room!

Note to self: When getting up at 3:00 a.m. to write (yes, on purpose) and when 5:00 a.m. rolls around and the manuscript is only one page longer, please be aware those two hours would have been much more productive spent sleeping. Sigh.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 10:09 am and is filed under Writing. You can feed this entry. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

19 comments to “I am Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy & Sleepy, but not Bashful, Happy or Doc”

Becca Furrow
Comment
1
· November 14th, 2006 at 10:42 am · Link

Wow, I’m both impressed and horrified at the story board.

I’m going to have to get one of her books.

Maybe I should take a storyboard class?
Alison
Comment
2
· November 14th, 2006 at 10:44 am · Link

Oh, that’s not Diana’s. The pic I saw of hers was a three-sided board, not a whole room! I once saw Laurell K. Hamilton’s office wall covered with stickies, but it was nothing like that guy’s!
Jordan
Comment
3
· November 14th, 2006 at 1:06 pm · Link

I’d never get a book written if I did anything like that. Sadly, I’d never be able to find my notes.
Jaci Burton
Comment
4
· November 14th, 2006 at 1:23 pm · Link

seeing that made me break out in hives

*scratch scratch*

Holy crap!
Jane
Comment
5
· November 14th, 2006 at 1:46 pm · Link

Did Will Self go to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the U of IA? A professor there swears by the use of post it notes for plotting.
Alison
Comment
6
· November 14th, 2006 at 1:49 pm · Link

Will Self (born September 26, 1961) is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School, Christ’s College Finchley, and Exeter College, Oxford.

I LOVE post it notes for plotting, but man, that is like NOTHING I’ve ever seen!
Karen Scott
Comment
7
· November 14th, 2006 at 4:43 pm · Link

That totally freaked me out.
jaq
Comment
8
· November 14th, 2006 at 5:38 pm · Link

Urk!

Just to see how all that translates into a book, I’ll have to look up one of his releases. :-P
Becca Furrow
Comment
9
· November 14th, 2006 at 7:54 pm · Link

Maybe he has like eight subplots.
Kat
Comment
10
· November 15th, 2006 at 4:59 am · Link

In those desperate ‘why do I think I can write?’ moments I’d just be tooooo tempted to flick a lighter and watch the domino effect ripple up the wall…
Stacy ~
Comment
11
· November 15th, 2006 at 5:46 am · Link

It’s kinda cool actually, if a tad overwhelming. Kat, if I were a writer, I’m sure I’d be so tempted to do that! Here’s to the post-its LOL.
Willa
Comment
12
· November 15th, 2006 at 5:57 am · Link

Oooh ~ I’d love to be the ‘post it’ rep in his area!! :D
Alison
Comment
13
· November 15th, 2006 at 6:06 am · Link

Oh, someone from Writer Inside? I accidentally deleted your comment! So sorry!
Alison
Comment
14
· November 15th, 2006 at 6:07 am · Link

LOL, Kat re: the lighter!
Lara
Comment
15
· November 15th, 2006 at 6:48 am · Link

OMG, that is . . . scary. First of all, how good are his eyes that he can actually read all those tiny notes stuck everywhere? If you zoom in on those images, I’m pretty sure you’d find that every single one of those sticky notes reads, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Crazy!!
Kristi
Comment
16
· November 15th, 2006 at 10:15 am · Link

My heebie-jeebies have heebie-jeebies just looking at that. Just think if he took it one step further and used colored post-its for the different characters, subplots and thematic events… :)

My story notebook and posterboard-sized storyboard feel a little neglected…cuz they don’t have nearly that many post-its.
HelenKay
Comment
17
· November 15th, 2006 at 8:11 pm · Link

I may be ill…
Lydia
Comment
18
· November 16th, 2006 at 1:19 am · Link

That’s insane… *crosses eyes*

My notes tend to consist of notes scribbled on a dirty, wadded napkin. I learned the hard was that I can’t keep everything I need in my head when I wrote MUSIC, but that wouldn’t do me a shred of good!
Gabriele
Comment
19
· November 17th, 2006 at 8:10 pm · Link

Ok, now I get it why people find my writing space scary.

I can’t work in a mess. :)

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19 comments to “I am Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy & Sleepy, but not Bashful, Happy or Doc”

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