A Quote by Elif Safak
I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me.
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The reverse process is extremely important to me - that artistic images can inspire to words and different myths, and that in certain cultures this process has been the normal relation between images and words.
Deep breaths. I am taking deep breaths. Composure. Which, for me, means composing... Maybe this is my way of creating the illusion of control over something I have no control over. Like, if it's just a story I'm telling or a song I'm singing, then I'll be okay because I'm the guy who's providing the words.
Being producer you're still going to have to sell somebody who's going to give you the money on the idea and everything like that. But it does give you a little bit more control if you're thinking in that creative process; it gives you more control to tell the story you want to tell rather than sort of just reading a script that somebody else wrote and says, "Yes, please, you can hire me for this job." So it's a little bit more hands-on, a little bit more closer to the heart.
Words, words, words, a million million words circle in my head like hawks, waiting to dive onto the page to rend and tear the only two words I want to write. Why me?
Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!
Well, I would hardly say I do write as yet. But I write because I like words. I suppose if I liked stone I might carve. I like words. I like reading. I notice particular words. That sets me off.
It is a conquest when we can lift ourselves above the annoyances of circumstances over which we have no control; but it is a greater victory when we can make those circumstances our helpers,--when we can appreciate the good there is in them. It has often seemed to me as if Life stood beside me, looking me in the face, and saying, "Child, you must learn to like me in the form in which you see me, before I can offer myself to you in any other aspect.
My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing. I write in words. I don write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors. I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words.
The process of getting conscious, for me, was a very, very uncomfortable, disturbing, and sometimes physically painful process. And so that's the standard to which I write, because it was what I've experienced over my time.
I like pulling on a baggy bee suit, forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me, remembering in the process that there is more to life than the merely human.
I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me
I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me.
Each story presents a mystery that has to be solved in the process of writing. When I'm at work on a story, I'm completely immersed in that world and in the lives of those characters; they're utterly real to me. Then, when I've completed the story, it all just falls away. The whole compulsion to understand is over.
I can never say what I want to say, it's been like this for a while now. I try to say something but all I get are wrong words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this can't catch her.
I have a fondness for words. On that note, I don't consider my lyrics to be all that great. I like to call myself a supplier of words rather than a lyricist.
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.
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