A Quote by Courtney A. Kemp
Every writer should be able to write anything if you do the research and you're sensitive enough to ask the questions.
Related Quotes
But we should ask the question: Why should a writer be more than a writer? Why should a writer be a guru? Why are we supposed to be psychiatrists? Isn't it enough to write and tell the truth? It's not like telling the truth is common. Writers are the earthworms of society. We aerate the soil. That's enough.
I have been very afraid of writing about other cultures and countries. I've been worried about getting the research wrong. I ask a lot of questions. I try to visit the area. If I'm not able to do that, I search out people from that country who live elsewhere and ask questions.
When I go across the country, I am awed, humbled and inspired every day by the tremendous research done every day by women. I hear from them; it still remains difficult. They ask: "Should I have a family or should I have a research career?" No one should have to make that decision.
I'm not a prophet or a teacher, I just ask questions. I don't think a writer should be a teacher, but should know how to pose the questions and explain the problems.
I believe writers should be able to write about anything - anything - but there is also a sense in which your lived experience shapes what you write and what you don't write.
I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.
It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."
Someday, as an exercise, you might ask a writer to give himself the questions he wants to answer. If you really want a writer's opinions, you have to ask for them. What you read might surprise you.
To me, I'm honored to be able to talk to and interview people like Dr. Harry Edwards and Emmitt Smith, and just to be able to ask them questions is an unbelievable opportunity. I'm not a journalist. I have no idea about that. My wife is 10 times the writer that I am. I'm not going to be on that level.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
There's this message to comedians in particular, that you shouldn't write it, and a television writer should write it. And that's a prevailing conventional wisdom that I think is really wrong. That's not to say that television writers aren't great, but I think that the belief that some comedy writer's going to be able to capture your voice is naive.
It's important to be able to simply ask the questions. Every single advance in science comes about because of courage to ask a question, an outrageous question. Like "Can a large heavy metal object fly if it goes fast enough with the right design?" People's worldviews are changed when they see that something unbelievable is possible. Airplane flight is now taken for granted. And so all wonderful advances start with an outrageous question.
I'm a writer, and what I do is write. I wasn't able to do anything else.
Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write.
Why do I write about China? That is a very good question. I think there are questions about China that I haven't been able to answer. The reason I write is that there are questions to which I want to find answers - or I want to find questions beyond those questions.
There's the wonder of being able to do research from your own living room, of course. I do find that my biggest research issue, though, is how to frame my questions.
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