"[...] bipedal nests of contradictions"

Source images: pxleyes and Retronaut

"No stage of the writing process — not the editor’s first response to the manuscript, not the review gauntlet — is as fraught for writers as those first few months of uncertainty: that miserable time when we think, believe, know with absolute assurance that we’ve found the key to the novel in our heads, though maybe, probably, definitely not.

     Want to lose a friend who’s a writer? Ask her, a month in, how it’s going. Better still, ask her to describe what she’s working on. She’ll try, because she has to ('Well, it’s about this friendship between these two, um, friends . . . ') all the while listening to the magic leaking out of the balloon, and she’ll hate you for it.
     If writers agree on anything — which is unlikely — it’s that nothing can damage a novel in embryo as quickly and effectively as trying to describe it before it’s ready. Unfortunately, because we’re writers, aka bipedal nests of contradictions, avoiding the temptation to share is never as easy as simply keeping our mouths shut."
— Mark Slouca, The New York Times Read more…

Looks like crap; sounds like crap

From: Art Forum

"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts."
— Anne Lamont, from: Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (via The Buhhda Rat)
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Heaven and Hell in the Same Breath

From: Forum Ksiazki

"When she [Cynthia Ozick] sits down to write she has to force herself into it. 'And I mean forcing it – without any hope that anything will come out of it. Because if I don't start, I won't get going. And sometimes starting is so difficult. Because it's all chaos. It's the difference between writing an essay, which if it's about Henry James, at least you know that much. But with fiction you don't. It could be a scene in your mind or it could be some kind of tendril that you can barely define. So I have to force it. And then after – and this is real compulsion, real self-flagellation – it kind of takes off. But there's a lot of agony before. And sometimes during. And sometimes all through. But just before the end and revelations start coming, that's the joy. But mostly its hell.'"— Emma Brockes, Guardian
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And more...

Buy her books (her latest is Foreign Bodies) here...

Canadian Giants of the Twentieth Century (1) Leonard Cohen

From: The Musical Box

"A Canadian poet, Cohen became one of pop’s most unlikely heroes during the heart of the late ‘60s psychedelic movement. But his music wasn’t at all psychedelic. It was understated, fanciful, modestly stylish and somewhat distant. Cohen was (and still is) a bohemian Bob Dylan - a wordsmith that conveys an epic emotive sweep with his lyrics even though he has been bestowed with a singing voice of seemingly limited technical range. Yet like Dylan’s now-haggard wail, Cohen’s now-raspy baritone only enhances the conversational intimacies and drama of his songs." — Walter Tunis, The Musical Box
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His Novels:

This edition, published by Bantam Books, New York (1967)

Again, this edition published by Bantam Books, New York (1971)











"Cohen's writing process, as he told an interviewer in 1998, is '...like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it.'" — Wikipedia
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Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

From: "Hallelujah" (on Various Positions, Leonard Cohen's seventh studio album, [1984])
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