A Quote by Nalo Hopkinson
I'm constantly coming up with new strategies for getting to the mental place where writing is so joyous and playful that I almost can't help putting the words down.
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I have been writing. Even when I intend not to write, I find myself writing. I'm currently in a place where I should be putting together the fifth book, but then more poems are coming. It's exciting and somewhat daunting. You know how we are when a new book of poems is at last coming together - all frenzy, distraction, and bounty? It's as if I've turned into summer itself.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it.
No one will argue that writing is an easy profession. Getting someone to pay you for your words isn’t easy. But there are strategies you can use to simplify the process and transform what you can produce.
If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
I was constantly getting in trouble, constantly trying to break the rules. Even when I was coming up in the drag scene, I was known as sort of the rule breaker, the rebel, the bad girl.
Bend words. Stretch them, squash them, mash them up, fold them. Turn them over or swing them upside down. Make up new words. Leave a place for the strange and downright impossible ones. Use ancient words. Hold on to the gangly, silly, slippy, truthful, dangerous, out-of-fashion ones.
There is something magical about putting a problem in writing. It is almost as though by writing about what is wrong, you start to discover new ways of making it right.
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.
So much of writing isn't the fun parts like we get to discuss. It is sitting there putting the words down.
Mindfulness is the ability to be aware, to note, to notice. When we apply that to our thoughts and mental habits, we bring a clarity of awareness in seeing what's just an ordinary thought and what's a judging thought that's pejorative or putting us down in some way. So, we first bring that lens of awareness, and then we can do all kinds of different strategies. We can inquire.
Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up...
TV is the place for writers to live. This is where you have creative control and you're constantly writing. 'Twilight' had almost a TV schedule to it. I was constantly working on these projects. There was not a whole lot of lull but I've gone onto other feature projects that's like, 'Okay, I'll get back to you on notes.'
During those times like in my early years as a writer I could actually write a song in ten minutes because all of a sudden a song is writing itself, I'm just putting down words. It just seem each line that you put down flows with the other ones. It's like writing a love letter you don't think about it, it's something from the heart.
I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm writing poetry. The words - what they are and what they can become - the possibilities of the words are vastly expanded for me when I'm writing a poem.
When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice.
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