A Quote by Anne Lamott
If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses dont go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.
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Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.
We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call attention to their shining - they just shine.
We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.
It's pretty easy to learn about lighthouses because there's a lot of lighthouse enthusiasts. Really, there's lots of books about it, and it's fairly easy to find lighthouse keepers' journals and logbooks.
Maybe life was like a sea, and all the people were like boats ... Everybody who was born was cast into the sea. Winds would blow them in all directions. Tides would rise and turn, in their own rhythm. And the boats - they just went along as best they could, trying to find a harbor.
I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don't like it. There's no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist. I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, "Yeah, that's it." They appear before me and they fit. I don't usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don't know it. Sometimes,you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you're doing.
Only the wise know just where predestination ends and free will begins. Meanwhile, you must keep on doing your best, according to your own clearest understanding. you must long for freedom as the drowning man longs for air. Without sincere longing, you will never find God.
Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Most people dont understand whats involved. The real writers persevere. The ones that dont either dont have enough fortitude and they probably wouldnt succeed anyway, or they fall in love with the glamour of writing as opposed to the writing of writing.
I didn't understand the reasons why I was there in the Lost episode - the mysteries of the island. I just instead made my own little reality, made it as simple as possible. I figured I was a crazy woman, just a little screw loose. I don't know how I got on that island. No one could tell me how I got there either, so I just assumed I got there on a shipwreck, and I went a little nutty.
Over time, I have come to see the work of literature less as narrating the world than "seeing the world with words." From the moment he begins to use words like colors in a painting, a writer can begin to see how wondrous and surprising the world is, and he breaks the bones of language to find his own voice. For this he needs paper, a pen, and the optimism of a child looking at the world for the first time.
Love is the sister to Truth, but they differ in two ways. You must go to Truth to find her. She will never come looking for you. However, you are never to go looking for her sister Love. Love will find you in your own divine timing, when you are ready for her. So dont look, she will come. She always does.
To me, the process of writing is just reading what I've written and - like running your hand over one of those mod glass stovetops to find where the heat is - looking for where the energy is in the prose, then going in the direction of that. It's an exercise in being open to whatever is there.
Go looking for conflict, and you'll find it. Go looking for people to take advantage of you, and they generally will. See the world as a dog-eat-dog place, and you'll always find a bigger dog looking at you as if you're his next meal. Go looking for the best in people, and you'll be amazed at how much talent, ingenuity, empathy, and good will you'll find. Ultimately, the world treats you more or less the way you expect to be treated.
If you find your truth you must follow it. You could find it in a paper bag, or in a statue, or in a slaughterhouse; you might find it dangling somewhere. People might say, What the heck are you doing? but its ok if they dont understand. And if you follow it, stay true to it, and respect it, you could be in store for the greatest journey you could ever imagine.
Writing in a journal is just a stall, a waiting game, a way to tell yourself that you're working when you're not, that you're doing something of value when you're just using up paper, that you're a writer when in fact you're just going through the motions of one. Look at me! I have blank paper in front of me-and now I'm filling it, with words!
When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.
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