A Quote by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The manuscript in the drawer either rots or ripens.
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As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.
As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.
But when I say it isn't meant for anyone's eyes, I don't mean it in the sense of one of those novel manuscripts people keep in a drawer, insisting they don't care if anyone else ever reads it or not.The people I have known who do that, I am convinced, have no faith in themselves as writers and know, deep down, that the novel is flawed, that they don't know how to tell the story, or they don't understand what the story is, or they haven't really got a story to tell. The manuscript in the drawer is the story.
There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.
Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
In the night ride across the Wular lake a small storm made me worry for the safety of my manuscript (Rajatarangini). It seemed as if the goddess of wisdom - Sharada, represented by waters of Kashmir, was unwilling to let me abduct the manuscript. This is what happened 1200 years ago to the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-Tsang, who had to leave his Sanskrit manuscript in the angry Indus River.
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.
I like when the manuscript keeps its authentic style and form, so even if I have accepted some advice from editors, I don't really want to adapt the manuscript to the needs and expectations of the readers.
I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "Science Fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.
The point is, I can’t tell you how to succeed. But I can tell you how not to: Give in to the shame of being rejected and put your manuscript—or painting, song, voice, dance moves, [insert passion here]—in the coffin that is your bedside drawer and close it for good. I guarantee you that it won’t take you anywhere. Or you could do what this writer did: Give in to your obsession instead.
If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.
As a writer, I know that - you write a first draft and then put it in a drawer. The longer I can put it in a drawer, the better off I am. So I structure my writing so that things can sit.
You can't argue that hip-hop rots away the moral character of kids or rots their brain and still see middle-class white kids going to college who are listening to hip-hop. Going on to become healthy adults listening to hip-hop.
I'd had 12 different job titles in publishing before I typed 'The End' at the bottom of a manuscript page. I thought the manuscript was in great shape; I was pretty proud of myself. Then I sent it to some publishing friends, and they tore it apart.
When Sondheim was visiting the Library of Congress, where the manuscript of 'Porgy and Bess' is housed, he was so overcome with emotion while holding the score in his hands that he shed a tear. He shed several tears, but one of the tears actually fell onto the original manuscript. And he was horrified.
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