For when you have writer's block.

Rosemary

Rosemary

I came across this today in an online dictionary page.  I thought that it might inspire some of you.

Galley Slaves

"I am a galley slave to pen and ink" said Honoré de Balzac in 1832, and the effort involved in writing has often been remarked.

(Sir Walter Scott's diary of 1827 has the comment "Wrote six leaves today and am tired.)"

In 1851 Gustave Flaubert returned to Balzac's image: "What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!"

Charles Dickens, writing to his son Harry in 1868, reflected: "Look at some of my manuscripts as are in the library at Gad's, and think of the patient hours devoted year after year to single lines".

Nearly thirty years later, Henry James said, "I find twenty-five years of practice only make me write slower and slower; so that I am rapidly reaching a fine maximum of twenty-five words a day."

The following year, Joseph Conrad wrote of the difficulty of getting started: "When I face that fatal manuscript it seems to me that I have forgotten how to think – worse! how to write."

George Orwell in the middle of the 20th century, considering why he wrote, gave the judgement, "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness."

Somehow, though, what Yeats called "the fascination of what's difficult" continues to draw writers back to confronting "the blank, implacable sheet of white paper" (Paul Scott).

Perhaps the key to it is found in the words of Virginia Woolf: "Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything."



Author: Elizabeth Knowles

Date: 01/06/2006

Howard

'sense of an impending shape'? Did Virginia Woolf mean you get fatter by sitting down so much to write??

Stan2

All these quotes are enough to make me give up! Writing is hard work and at times can be frustrating, nevertheless, I enjoy writing and still get a buzz when I see my name beneath (or above)a published article.

Rosemary

That's funny Stan they had the opposite effect on me.  I mean if the great authors went through the block but still persevered and produced acceptable work;surely it is an incentive?  I loved Walter Scott's ,'Wrote six leaves today'

TaffetaPunk

Bud, that would be a long sentence...

TaffetaPunk

Hehe, no, I haven't - they are long sentences, though :o)

Rosemary

It's so long since I read it , but was the 'Turn of the Screw' the one set in Venice.  I read two of his in my studies, but It was a while back.