A Quote by Margaret Atwood

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. — © Margaret Atwood
A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection.
In certain businesses, I would say 10 failures to one success is a perfectly acceptable ratio. Because the failures die pretty quickly, they're not that expensive, and the successes can be really huge.
As I've evolved in life my writing process has taken a turn. I'm inspired by everyday life. I could be in the middle of something and hear a commercial. I enjoy songs writing themselves.
You know you’re writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.
The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer.
Small wastebasket liners, $1.17 ... tall wastebasket liners, $2.29 ... garbage can liners, $3.98 ... I think I just spent $7.44 buying something I'm going to throw away.
Most professionals specialize in only part of the complex community revitalization process. Incomplete efforts usually create messy, expensive, demoralizing failures. Few specialists understand how to bring a place back to life with a holistic approach. If anyone understands the complete revitalization process, it's Storm Cunningham. He's spent over a decade rigorously studying successes and failures worldwide. He can look at a community, regional, or organizational regeneration or redevelopment process, and quickly spot what's wrong...what's missing.
Evolved creators are just as curious about their failures as they are of their successes.
Tulips come up in spring for no reason. Of course, you planted bulbs and now in April the earth warms up. But why? For no reason except gravity. Why gravity? For no reason. And why did you plant red tulip bulbs to begin with? For beauty, which is itself and has no reason. So the world is empty. Things rise and fall for no reason. And what a great opportunity that is! You can start writing again at any minute. Let go of all your failures and sit down and write something great. Or write something terrible and feel great about it.
As an actor, you see a sliver of how the show is made, but to see the actual writing process and the re-writing process and the casting process and art direction and set design - all of this is happening in a very intense period.
I have tried to devote my life - with all my husband failures, father failures, pastor failures, friend failures, any other possible failures I'm sure I've done them - to the God-centeredness of God and my aspiring, yearning to join Him in that activity. God is passionate about hallowing the name of God.
I'm a writer who simply can't know what I'm writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces that represent all I've lost and establishing fresh patterns within all that remains.
Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have tapped into a legitimate anger about the failures of Washington, but instead of running a campaign built on a positive vision for overcoming these failures, Donald Trump has conducted a polarizing and divisive campaign.
Our writing, especially during 'Boxer' - the recording process was the writing process, which is not the way I would advise anyone else to do it.
It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.
All my successes have been built on my failures.
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