A Quote by Walter Mosley
The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.
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I'm working with fragments a lot of the time and the connective tissue isn't there yet. I think of it the way comics work. You have a block here and a block here, and there's this white space in between. Somehow your mind makes the leap to connect those two blocks. Finding a way to trick your mind into connecting those blocks is one of the fun things for me about writing. You can have those leaps that will emerge into something, if you're lucky.
Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold
The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day - every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work.
Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.
You have to learn to trust - and listen to - your unconscious mind. If you pose the question to your unconscious "is this person a friend or a foe" - safe or a threat - your unconscious mind is hard-wired to assess that brilliantly for you. It's just that we're not very good at paying attention to what our unconscious minds are telling us.
I know playwrights who like to kid themselves into saying that their characters are so well formed that they just take over. They determine the structure of the play. By which is meant, I suspect, only that the unconscious mind has done its work so thoroughly that the play just has to be filtered through the conscious mind. But there's work to be done - and discovery to be made.
I haven't done much press for many reasons, but mostly because it's not an interesting dialogue about work that's been done. It's turned into something else. It's become this ridiculous other thing.
I have always been fascinated by the human mind, conscious and unconscious - that is what writing and reading is about, too. The why of your life and the why of your choices and the what has happened that you know and the what that you don't know is really riveting, and psychoanalysts share my wonder at how it all unfolds.
I write about the American dream: if you set your mind to do something, you can do it. My fans know they're getting the real thing.
We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all.
The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.
You cannot find your soul with your mind,
you must use your heart.
You must know what you are feeling.
If you don't know what you are feeling, you will create unconsciously.
If you are unconscious of an aspect of yourself;
if it operates outside your field of awareness,
that aspect has power over you.
Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.
I think connecting to a character is like connecting to any human being - either you like them or you don't. You might not be able to list the reasons why you love your best friend or what attracted you to them; it's just something that you feel - a connection, an understanding, or a curiosity that makes you want to get to know them.
Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.
When I wrote Wakolda at first I wasn't conscious that I was writing about something so close to or that had so many similar elements with XXY. It was just after I was done writing that I noticed it. I think both teenagers in each film have many similarities, and Mengele is the extreme version of the plastic surgeon in XXY. Both stories definitely have several ideas connecting them.
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